

The Making 


OF A Trade School 




^ ^ 




Mary Schenck Woolman 




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THE MAKING 
OF A TRADE SCHOOL 

By MARY SCHENCK WOOLMAN 

Director of Manhattan Trade School for Girls 
Professor of Domestic Art, Teachers College, Columbia University 




WHITCOMB & BARROWS 

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Copyright 1909 
By Teachers College 



By Transfer 

D, C. Public Library 

AUG 17 1934 



Thomas Todd Co., Printers 
14 ]Bp{iQoi\ S.treet 
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niSIBiraorCOWJMBliPSOPKKl^ 



CONTENTS 



PART 



PAGB 



I. Organization and Work i 

II. Representative Problems 3S 

III. Equipment and Support ^^ 

IV. Outlines and Detailed Accounts of Department 

Work ^g 



i mn, 



THE MAKING OF A TRADE 
SCHOOL 

PART I 

ORGANIZATION AND WORK 
History 

The Manhattan Trade School for Girls began its 
work in November, 1902. The building selected for 
the school was a large private house at 233 West 14th 
Street, which was equipped like a factory and could 
comfortably accommodate 100 pupils. Training was 
offered in a variety of satisfactory trades which required 
the expert use of the needle, the paste brush, and the 
foot and electric power sewing machines. 

Beginning with twenty pupils on its first day, it was 
but a few months before the full 100 were on roll and 
others were applying. In endeavoring to help all who 
desired instruction the building was soon overcrowded. 
It thus became evident that, unless increased accommo- 
dation was provided, the number already in attendance 
must be decreased and others, anxious for the training, 
must be turned away. It was decided that even though 
the enterprise was young the need was urgent, demand- 
ing unusual exertion. It would therefore be wise to 
make every effort to purchase more commodious quarters. 
In June, 1906, the school moved to a fine business build- 



2 THE MAKING OF A TRADE SCHOOL 

ing at 209-213 East 23d Street, which could offer daily 
instruction to about 500 girls. 

The movement owes its existence to the earnest study 
that a group of women and men, interested in philan- 
thropic, sociological, economic, and educational work, 
gave to the condition of the working girl in New York 
City. They were all intimately acquainted with the diffi- 
culties of the situation. Early in the winter of 1902 
this committee made a special investigation of the work- 
rooms of New York. They were but the more convinced 
that (i) the wages of unskilled labor are decHning; 
(2) while there is a good opportunity for highly skilled 
labor, the supply is inadequate; (3) the condition of the 
young, inexpert working girl must be ameliorated by 
the speedy opening of a trade school for those who have 
reached the age to obtain working papers; (4) if public 
instruction could not immediately undertake the organ- 
ization of such a school, then private initiative must do 
it, even though it must depend for its support upon 
voluntary contributions. The result was that an extreme 
effort was put forth and the following November the 
first trade school in America, for girls of fourteen years 
of age, was begun. 

The first Board of Administrators, composed largely 
of members of the original committee of investigators, 
was as follows: 

President, Miss Virginia Potter; Vice-Presidents, 
Dr. Felix Adler, Mr. John Graham Brooks, Mrs. Theo- 
dore Hellman, Mrs. Anna Garlin Spencer, Mrs. Henry 
Ollesheimer; Treasurer, Mr. J. G. Phelps Stokes; Sec- 
retary, Mr. John L. Eliot; Assistant Secretary, Miss 



ORGANIZATION AND WORK 3 

Louise B. Lockwood; Director, Professor Mary Schenck 
Woolman. 

Purpose and Scope 

The immediate purpose of the school was to train 
the youngest and poorest wage-earners to be self-support- 
ing as quickly as possible. It was decided to help the 
industrial workers rather than the commercial and pro- 
fessional, as the last two are already to some extent 
provided for in education. The function of the school 
was, therefore, that of the Short-Time Trade School, 
which would provide the girl who must go to work the 
moment she can obtain her working papers (about four- 
teen years of age) with an enlightened apprenticeship 
in some productive occupation. Such training cannot be 
obtained satisfactorily in the market. The immature 
workers are present there in such large numbers that 
they complicate the industrial problem by their poverty 
and inability, and thus tend to lower the wage. Jane 
Addams, of Hull House, Chicago, says these untrained 
girls "enter industry at its most painful point, where 
the trades are already so overcrowded and subdivided 
that there remains in them very little education for the 
worker." The school purposed to give its help at this 
very point. 

Trade, on its side, is eager to have skilled women 
directly fitted for its workrooms, but finds them hard to 
obtain. The school's duty was to discover the way 
to meet this wish of the employers of labor. It is true 
that the utilitarian and industrial education offered by 
public and private instruction has benefited the home 



4 THE MAKING OF A TRADE SCHOOL 

and society, but such training has not met the problem 
of adequately fitting for specific employments the young 
worker who has but a few months to spare. The lack 
in this instruction has been in specific trade application 
and flexibility as to method, artistic needs, and mechan- 
ical devices. These points are essential to place the girl 
in immediate touch with her workroom. 

Therefore the Manhattan Trade School assumed the 
responsibility of providing an economic instruction in 
the practical work of various trades, thus supplying them 
with capable assistants. Hence its purpose differed not 
only from the more general instruction of the usual 
technical institution, but also from those schools which 
offered specific training in one trade (such as dress- 
making), in that it (i) offered help to the youngest 
wage-earners, (2) gave the choice among many trades, 
and (3) held the firm conviction that the adequate 
preparation of successful workers requires more factors 
of instruction than the training for skill alone. The 
ideals of the school were the following: (i) to train a 
girl that she may become self-supporting; (2) to furnish 
a training which shall enable the worker to shift from 
one occupation to another allied occupation, i. e., elas- 
ticity; (3) to train a girl to understand her relation to 
her employer, to her fellow- worker, and to her product; 
(4) to train a girl to value health and to know how to 
keep and improve it; (5) to train a girl to utilize her 
former education in such necessary business processes 
as belong to her workroom; (6) to develop a better 
woman while making a successful worker; (7) to teach 
the community at large how best to accomplish such 



ORGANIZATION AND WORK 5 

training, i. e., to serve as a model whose advice and help 
would facilitate the founding of the best kind of schools 
for the lowest rank of women workers. 

In other words, the Manhattan Trade School aimed 
to find a way (i) to improve the worker, physically, 
mentally, morally, and financially; (2) to better the con- 
ditions of labor in the workroom; (3) to raise the 
character of the industries and the conditions of the 
homes, and (4) to show that such education could be 
practically undertaken by public instruction. The four 
aims are really one, for the better workers should 
improve the product, make higher wages, react advan- 
tageously on the industrial situation and on the home, 
and the course of instruction formulated to accomplish 
this end would help in the further introduction of such 
training. 

It was not expected that immature girls of fourteen 
or fifteen years of age would, immediately on entering 
the market, make large salaries or be broad-minded 
citizens. The hope was to give them a foundation which 
would enable them to adapt themselves to situations best 
fitted to their abilities and to make possible a steady 
advance toward better occupations, wages, and living. 
In order to do this, each girl on^entering the school must 
be regarded as having capacity for some special occu- 
pation. This aptitude must be discovered that she may 
be placed where she can attain her highest efficiency as 
rapidly as possible. She must be treated individually, 
not as one of a class. Her own efforts must be 
awakened, her handicaps, such as inadequate health 
and unadaptable education, must be removed, and her 



b THE MAKING OF A TRADE SCHOOL 

training proceed in a way to give her possession of 
her powers. 

Conditions among the ^Vorkers 

The conditions of Hfe among many of the wage- 
earners of New York City are, briefly stated, as follows : 
Thousands of families are so poor that the children 
must go to work the moment the compulsory school 
years are over. In 1897, 14,900 boys and girls dropped 
from the fifth school grade, most of them going to work 
from necessity more or less pressing. To rise to impor- 
tant positions in factories, workrooms, or department 
stores will require a practical combination of any needed 
craft with the ability to utilize their school education in 
rapid deductions, business letters, accounts, and trade 
transactions. The public school offers such children a 
general education which will be completed in the eighth 
grade, but the majority leave before that time. For 
varying reasons, such as their foreign birth, irregular 
attendance, the impossibility of much personal attention 
in the crowded classes of a great city, poor conditions of 
health, and the desire of the pupils to escape the routine 
of school as soon as the law will allow, the greater 
number of them, who go early into trade, have not had 
a satisfactory education for helping them in their work- 
ing life. Year after year are they found wanting, and 
yet young workers still come from the schools at fourteen 
with poor health, little available hand skill, unprepared 
to write business letters or to express themselves clearly 
either by tongue or pen, uninterested in the daily news 
except in personal or tragic events, unaware of municipal 



ORGANIZATION AND WORK 7 

conditions affecting them, ignorant of the simple terms 
of business hfe, and with their arithmetic unavailable 
for use, even in the simple fundamental processes when 
complicated with details of trade. The mechanical pro- 
cesses, therefore, which they do know are now useless 
unless they can first think out the problem. 

These boys and girls have no regret at leaving the 
schools, and are, as a rule, glad to get to work. The 
tragedy of life, however, begins when they become wage- 
earners, for they are only fitted for unskilled and poorly 
paid positions. A little fourteen-year-old girl finds it 
difficult to obtain a satisfactory occupation in the teeming 
workrooms of New York. She, or some member of her 
family, eagerly searches the advertising sheet of one of 
the daily papers. Most of the "Wants" are entirely 
beyond her crude powers to supply. An unskilled worker 
is perhaps desired in some business house, but the appli- 
cant finds that hundreds of other girls are flocking to 
obtain the same position, and her chance is too remote 
for hope. Or perhaps, after weary days of wandering 
about from place to place, she is recommended to the 
boss of some shop, and finds herself in the midst of 
machines which rush forward at 4,000 or more stitches 
a minute. She assists a busy worker on men's shirts, 
her duty being to pin parts together, to finish off, or to 
run errands. From early morning to late afternoon, 
with an interval for lunch, she must be ready to lend a 
hand. She can get at best but $2.50 or $3.00 per week. 
No rise is possible in this shop unless she can work 
well on a machine. Her fellow-workers are too busy 
to teach her, for each moment's pause means reduction 



8 THE MAKING OF A TRADE SCHOOL 

in their little wage. Perhaps she does persist and finally 
can control a machine. By learning to do one thing 
rapidly she can obtain a better wage, but two or even 
more years in trade often pass before she can earn five 
dollars a week. After several seasons spent in doing 
the same process thousands of times, her desire for new 
work becomes deadened, and she is afraid to attempt 
anything different from her one set task. She usually 
refuses to try more advanced work, even if offered a 
good salary while she is learning, for she has lost her 
ability to push ahead. 

In general, it may be said that the untrained girl has 
to take the best place she can find, without reference to 
her ability, her physical condition, or her incHnation. 
The most desirable trades are seldom open to her, for 
they require workers of experience, or, at least, those 
who have had recognized instruction. Even if a green 
girl enters a skilled trade, she cannot rise easily in it, 
and is apt to be dropped out at the first slack season. 
The sort of positions open to her have usually little 
future, as they are isolated occupations that do not lead 
to more advanced work. Illustrations of these employ- 
ments are wrapping braid, sorting silk, running errands, 
tying fringe, taking out and putting in buttons in a 
laundry, dipping candy, assorting lamps, making cigar- 
ettes, tending a machine, and tying up packages. These 
young, unskilled girls wander from one of these occu- 
pations to another; their salaries, never running high, 
rise and fall according to the need felt for the worker, 
and not because her increasing ability is a factor in her 
trade life. After several years spent in the market, she 
is little better off than at her entrance. 



ORGANIZATION AND WORK 9 

Some Difficulties of Organization 

It was to relieve this serious situation that the 
Manhattan Trade School was founded. It began its 
work in the face of great discouragements. Employers 
were prejudiced against such instruction, for girls trained 
in former technical schools had not given satisfaction 
in the workrooms. The parents of the pupils felt that 
they could not sacrifice themselves further than the end 
of the compulsory school years, but must then send their 
children into wage-earning positions. ( It was impossible 
to obtain state or municipal aid, and it was known that 
the experiment must be costly, for: (i) A trade school 
must be open all the year for day classes, and for night 
work when needed (schools usually are open from eight 
to ten months). (2) The work must be done on correct 
materials, which are often expensive and perishable ; but 
pupils are too poor to provide them, therefore the school 
must plan to do so. (3) The supervisors must be well 
educated, with a broad-minded view of industry, capable 
of original thought, and having a practical knowledge of 
trade requirement (women of such caliber can always 
command the best salaries). The teachers and fore- 
women also must combine teaching ability with compe- 
tence in their workrooms; but as the market wishes a 
similar class of service and gives excellent wages to 
obtain it, the school must offer a like or even a larger 
amount. (4) Teachers of highly skilled industries are 
expert, usually, in but the one occupation, such as straw 
hat making by electric machine or jewelry box making; 
consequently, even if the student body is small, the 



10 THE MAKING OF A TRADE SCHOOL 

teaching force can seldom be reduced without cutting- 
off an entire department or a trade. A trade school 
differs from the high school in this particular, for in the 
latter, when necessary, two or more academic subjects 
can be taught by the same instructor. _,^/' 

Another difficulty confronting the school at the be- 
ginning was, that while numerous occupations in New 
York are open to women, there was reason to think 
that some of these were not well adapted to them. Little 
was known at that time of the trades offering 'oppor- 
tunities for good wages, steady rise to better positions, 
satisfactory sanitary conditions, and moderate hours of 
labor; of the physical effect of many of the popular 
occupations ; of the specific requirements of each kind 
.of employment; of the effect of the working girls in their 
workrooms and in their homes ; of their health and how 
to improve it ; of the needs and wishes of the employers ; 
of the relation of the Trade Union to trade instruction, 
and of labor legislation already operative or which should 
be furthered. Before deciding on courses of instruction 
in the Manhattan Trade School some accurate know- 
ledge of these facts had to be obtained. 

Selection of Trades 

The selection of definite trades was made after five 
months of investigation in the factories, workrooms, and 
department stores of New York City. In general, it 
can be said of the occupations chosen that they employ 
large numbers of women ; require expert workers ; train- 
ing for them is difficult to obtain ; there is chance within 
them for rise to better positions; the wages are good, 



ORGANIZATION AND WORK II 

and favorable conditions, both physical and moral, pre- 
vail in the workrooms. Some trades employing women 
were rejected, as they failed to meet necessary require- 
ments, while others were not chosen, as there was little 
chance in them to rise on account of men's trades inter- 
vening. Slack seasons occurring in many otherwise good 
employments were considered, and plans were made 
whereby the worker could be enabled to shift to another 
allied trade when her own was slack. If a girl gains 
complete control of her tool she can adapt herself to 
other occupations in which it is used with less difficulty 
than she can change to a trade requiring another tool. 
Women's industries, to a great extent, center around the 
skilled use of a few tools. These tools were selected as 
centers of the school activities, and the connected trades 
were radiated from them. The most skilled occupations 
were found to require the use of the sewing machine, 
foot and electric power, the paint brush, the paste brush, 
and the needle. Statistics show that teaching the use of 
this last tool will affect over one-half of the women 
wage-earners of New York, of whom there are at least 
370,000. In addition to the general scheme of fitting a 
worker so that she may take up another allied occupa- 
tion in slack seasons, specific training for this purpose is 
given to those students who choose trades where the busy 
season is short and of frequent recurrence. 

Trade Courses 

The curriculum includes instruction in the following 
trades ; the courses are short and the teaching is in trade 
lines: 



12 THE MAKING OF A TRADE SCHOOL 

I. Use of electric power sewing machines. 

1. General Operating — (cheaper variety of work — 
seasonal; fair wages. Better grade of work — year 
round, fair and good wages, piece or week work) : 
Shirtwaists, children's dresses (cloth and cotton), 
boys' waists, infants' wear, children's clothing, 
women's underwear, fancy petticoats, kimonos and 
dressing sacques. 

2. Special Machines — (seasonal to year round work, 
depending on kind and demand, wages good) : 
Lace stitch, hemstitching, buttonhole, embroidery 
(hand and Bonnaz), and scalloping. 

3. Dressmaking Operating — (year round, wages 
good) : Lingerie, fancy waists and suits. 

4. Straw Sewing — (excellent wages for a short 
season, but the worker can then return to good 
wages in general operating) : Women's and men's 
hats. 

II. Use of the needle and foot power sewing machines. 

1. Dress and Garment Making — (seasons nine to 
eleven months, and fair to good wages) : Uniforms 
and aprons, white work and simple white embroid- 
ery, gymnasium and swimming suits (wholesale 
and custom), lingerie, dress embroidery, dress- 
making (plain and fancy). 

2. Millinery — (short seasonal work, low wages, diffi- 
cult for the average young worker to rise) : Trim- 
mings and frame making. 

3. Lampshade and Candleshade Making — (seasonal 
work, fair pay). This trade supplements the 
Millinery. 

III. Use of paste and glue: i. Sample mounting (vir- 
tually year work, fair wages). 2. Sample book 



ORGANIZATION AND WORK I3 

covers, labeling, tissue paper novelties and decora- 
tions (seasonal and year round work, good wages). 
3. Novelty work (year round work, changed within 
workroom to meet demand, wages good) . 4. Jewelry 
and silverware case making (year round work, 
wages good). 

IV. Use of brush and pencil (year round work, good 
wages) : Special elementary art trades, perforating 
and stamping, costume sketching, photograph and 
slide retouching. 

Note. Year round work, in general, includes a holiday 
of longer or shorter duration, usually without pay. 

Entrance Plans 

The school is open throughout the year in order to 
train girls whenever they come — the summer months 
being slack in most trades are especially desirable for 
instruction. The tuition is free, and in cases of extreme 
necessity a committee gives Students' Aid, in proportion 
to the need. Entrance to day classes for girls who are 
from fourteen to seventeen years of age and who can 
show their working papers or be able to produce docu- 
mentary evidence of age, if under sixteen, can occur 
any week. 

Each girl who enters, after selecting her trade, is 
given a typewritten paper showing the possible steps 
of advance in her chosen course. She takes this home 
in order that the family may know what is before her. 
She can by special effort or by outside study lessen the 
length of her training. The first month in the school 
is a test time. If the girl shows the needed qualities 
she is allowed to continue. 



14 THE MAKING OF A TRADE SCHOOL 

During the month of trial her instructors decide 
what she needs and if her chosen trade is the best for 
her. The right is reserved to make a complete change 
if her health will not stand the one she desires, if she 
has no ability for it, or if she gives evidence of special 
talent in another direction. 

Industrial Intelligence 

Every student has, as a part of her trade education, 
such academic work, art, and physical training as seems 
necessary; when she passes certain standards she is then 
allowed to devote full time to her selected occupation. (^ 
It is not possible for a worker who has skill with the 
hand and no education to back it ^p to rise far in her 
trade. There is many a tragedy in the market of the 
woman whose poor early education prevented her from 
getting ahead. Accurate expression, whether oral or 
written, the use of arithmetic in simple trade transactions 
or detailed accounts, the ability to grasp the important 
factors in any situation and then to go to work without 
waste of time or motion, are required for positions of 
trust and for supervision in any workroom. It was 
soon discovered that the girls entering the school know 
arithmetic in an abstract way, but are at sea when asked 
to meet the ordinary trade problems. They are inaccu- 
rate in reading and copying; they cannot write a letter 
of application, conduct correspondence, make out checks, 
or keep simple accounts. They are ignorant of the laws 
already made which concern them and of their own rela- 
tion to future laws. They have no ideals in their trade 
life. They need to see the relation of their chosen 



ORGANIZATION AND WORK 1 5 

trade to the country, of their work to their employer's 
success, the effect they may have in bringing about a 
better feeling between the employer and the wage-earner. 
>A practical, immediately available business education is 
absolutely essential to make workwomen of executive 
ability. Therefore specific trade instruction in arith- 
metic, English, history, geography, and civics was 
planned to supplement and enrich the trade courses. 

Steady progress has been made in determining the 
kind of cultural trade instruction which will best assist 
such young wage-earners. A new field in practical edu- 
cation had to be opened, and subject matter which could 
be of service in the workrooms selected from it. The 
many trades of the school had to be studied in order to 
know their needs. The work has grown more valuable 
each year and has proved itself to be a truly necessary 
part of the curriculum. A concrete evidence of its worth 
is the fact that many of the girls in slack seasons have 
taken clerical positions and have been complimented on 
their grasp of the subject, their orderliness, their ability 
to think, and their reliability. Naturally all departments 
unite to develop character in the students, but the 
Academic Department feels this to be a special aim. 
Pleasure in the subject of instruction, followed by mental 
and moral improvement, has indicated clearly that the 
academic dullness which is shown at entrance comes fre- 
quently from lack of motive in former studies. The 
interest is all the more encouraging as there are many 
handicaps in the teaching, for the students enter at any 
time, are graded by the trades they select, and are placed 
in the market as quickly as possible; hence the work 



l6 THE MAKING OF A TRADE SCHOOL 

cannot be uniform in its advance. Nor is the academic 
work a help to the girls in their business life only, for 
such subjects as the keeping of accounts, the considera- 
tion of the cost of living, and the value and price of 
materials are of direct use also in home life. 

Trade Art Instruction 

J 
■^Courses in Trade Art were also organized as a 

fundamental part of the instruction. Each trade has 
its own art, and the school has tried to adapt the work 
in the studios to each different occupation. It recog- 
nizes that the art applied in dressmaking differs from 
that in millinery, and this again from that required for 
decorating jewelry boxes and calendars. It consequently 
offers each student the kind of elementary art training 
needed in her trade. The time is too short to develop 
designers, but it does help a girl to be more exact, 
resourceful, and useful in her workroom, and often 
enables her to make a higher wage. A worker who 
can place trimming, adapt designs to new purposes, 
stamp patterns, draw copies of garments, and combine 
color attractively is especially desirable in her chosen 
employment. ~^s _ 

Health 

The young wage-earner of New York is much handi- 
capped by her poor physical condition; heredity, poor 
habits of life, and unsanitary homes show their effects 
upon her. The girls who come to the school are young 
enough to remedy many of their defects. In a few 
months they will be in positions demanding eight or 



ORGANIZATION AND WORK I7 

more hours a day, in which they must strain every 
nerve and bend all of their energies to meet the standard 
brought about by trade competition. The Physical De- 
partment of the school studies the health of each girl 
and trains her to care adequately for it. The specific 
treatment needed by some of the students takes them 
many hours a week from their department work. While 
this has its disadvantages, it is felt to be more important 
to improve the physical condition than to develop skill 
alone when the health is too poor to stand the strain of 
exacting positions. It is often difficult at first to per- 
suade parents that such close attention to health is 
necessary. The results, however, in the majority of 
cases have proved the wisdom of this procedure. 

Immediately after entering the school and being 
assigned to a department each girl must report to the 
school physician. Beginning with the family history, a 
complete record of all the important events relating to 
her physical life is taken. She is closely questioned 
as to all bodily functions, and a careful record is kept 
of irregularities. Eyes, ears, teeth, nose, throat, and 
feet are likewise examined, and measurements are taken 
of height, weight, and the principal expansions. After 
the examination, instruction as to treatment is given, 
if any is needed. 

The work in the gymnasium has three purposes: 
invigorative, reactive, and corrective. Every girl who 
is not restricted on account of physical defects takes the 
prescribed gymnastic work. Nor has this a physical 
efifect only, for through the active games such qualities 
as judgment and accuracy, self-control, and the harmo- 



l8 THE MAKING OF A TRADE SCHOOL 

nious working with others are developed. Slow, un- 
certain, vague movements denote lack of mental quick- 
ness and strength. Motor activity, rightly directed, leads 
to poise of mind as well as of body. These girls live 
mostly in crowded localities of the city, where free 
exercise is unknown. The school aims, as far as possi- 
ble, to supply the lack of wholesome outdoor life and 
give joyous active exercise. Talks on hygiene are a 
regular part of the work and aim: (i) to give each 
girl a knowledge of her body and of its functions 
which will enable her to care for her health in an in- 
telligent manner; (2) to show her the relation of food 
and its preparation to her physical condition; (3) to 
establish in her mind ideals of correct living which 
can be made practical in her surroundings; and (4), 
recognizing the right and desire of every girl for amuse- 
ment, to create a love for wholesome and simple pleas- 
ures that will take the place of the too strenuous and 
often unwise recreations which tend to undermine the 
health of the girl who works. 

The Lunchroom and the Cooking Classes 

From the opening of the school, hot soup, hot choco- 
late, or cold milk had been served daily, at two cents 
a cup, to those wishing to supplement the cold lunch 
which they had brought from their homes. The teachers 
also had an opportunity of buying a simple, hot meal 
which was prepared by one of their number, assisted 
by students who aided in the preparation, serving, and 
clearing away. At first the average girl felt she could 



ORGANIZATION AND WORK ig 

not give much time to her trade training, consequently 

such time had to be devoted to making her able to 

command a living wage. The hope, however, that in the 

future the opportunity would come for offering increased 

domestic training was never forgotten. The opening 

at the school of a temporary workroom for unemployed 

women during the financial stress of 1908 provided them 

with regular work and pay. It was advisable also to 

serve nourishing lunches daily to these underfed workers. 

There was already a simple lunchroom in the basement 

of the school, containing such bare necessities as plain 

tables on horses, long wooden benches, a gas stove with 

four burners, a few cooking utensils, and a closet filled 

with inexpensive china. The complete cost of equipment 

had been $300. 

The school was now, however, face to face with the 
need to feed daily more than 500 people— teachers, 
workers, and students — and yet no additional money 
could be spent for equipment. The necessity was so 
great, however, that in addition to the usual lunches a 
hot, nourishing meal was given daily to the hundred 
workers in the temporary workroom, for which they 
paid one-half of the price of materials. 

With this inauguration of regular cooking it seemed 
especially desirable to take the opportunity of training 
at least some of the students in the selection, care, and 
preparation of food. The majority of these girls will 
be the mothers of the next generation, and yet they 
know nothing of food values or food preparation. This 
is evident from the daily lunches they bring and from 
their discussions in the class on hygiene. On the other 



20 THE MAKING OF A TRADE SCHOOL 

hand, girls who can remain but a few months in the 
school have a serious need to face, that of self-support, 
for the wage for unskilled girls ($3.00) is not sufficient 
to live on with decency. The physical, mental, and moral 
future of these young girls demands that they should 
be able to make more than this pittance. In the few 
months during which the majority are in attendance both 
a trade training and a knowledge of cooking cannot be 
given, therefore the former must take the precedence. 
The school has been able to prove, however, that girls 
educated there can command a fair wage in trade, but 
that a longer time given to this training will enable 
them to obtain better positions and salaries. Hence an 
increasing number have been willing to remain longer, 
giving even a year or more to preparation. It was with 
this latter class that the time was ripe to offer some 
training in lunchroom cookery which could teach them 
what could be procured at low prices and yet be nourish- 
ing; how to prepare food at home, and how to use the 
hot table often found in an up-to-date factory. For this 
purpose, therefore, some simple additional equipment 
was installed and a daily menu was offered, comprising 
inexpensive, attractive, wholesome dishes, at the lowest 
possible cost. Many of the students care for so little 
variety in food that all of the necessary elements for 
building strong, healthy bodies are not supplied, hence 
they are under-nourished. They require encouragement 
to even try the food which is essential for improving 
their physical condition. The girls have taken great 
interest in their lunchroom cookery. They appreciate 
the inexpensive menus and admire the simple table deco- 



ORGANIZATION AND WORK 21 

rations. Gradually they have given up spending their 
few pennies for poor fruit, cake, or candy at some cheap 
shop, and now purchase nourishing dishes cooked by the 
students at the school. 

The cooking course connects directly with the talks on 
hygiene. The plan of work is the following : ( i ) Twenty 
girls are chosen at one time. These work in two groups 
of ten each, and for six weeks have daily one-hour 
lessons. This gives them thirty lessons, which is almost 
equivalent to what the public school offers in a year, 
but, being concentrated into daily work and practical 
use in the lunchroom, is of equal, if not greater, efficacy. 
(2) The students set the tables, cook a definite part of 
the lunch, dish the articles, prepare the counters, sell the 
various dishes, keep and report sales, and clear the 
counters afterward. The groups alternate in order that 
preparing food, watching its progress, and taking it from 
the stove may be done by all with a minimum loss of 
time from their trade instruction. (3) The selection 
of girls to take the course is made from (a) those who 
can remain long enough in the school to combine trade 
training with the simple cooking course, (b) those who 
have such poor health that a knowledge of what to 
eat and how to cook it is the first consideration, and 
(c) those who are already little housekeepers in their 
homes, as their mothers are incapacitated or dead. 

After several months of experience it was felt that 
the six weeks of constant practice was well worth while. 
More elaborate courses of cookery would demand a 
more thorough kitchen equipment, entailing much ex- 
pense, and would require students to remain a longer 



22 THE MAKING OF A TRADE SCHOOL 

time in school. With the present arrangement they 
learn the most important cooking processes in a very 
practical way, and discuss the relation of food to them- 
selves and to their families. 



Trade Orders 

The handwork in the various departments falls into 
three grades: i. Practice work, which not being up to 
the standard is ripped up and used again. 2. Seconds; 
fair work, not quite up to the school standard for trade 
work. This is sold at cost to the students or to needy 
institutions. 3. Trade work; up to the standard. This 
is sold to the trade or to private customers at regular 
market prices. This feature of the school work, entail- 
ing, as it does, the taking of many varieties of orders 
from the outside factories and workrooms, has proved 
itself to be an important educational factor. After six 
years of experience in utilizing orders from the outside 
workrooms, it can be said that this part of the instruction 
serves the following purposes: (i) It provides the stu- 
dents with adequate experience on classes of material 
used in the best workrooms; these girls could not 
purchase such materials and the school could not afford 
to buy them for practice. (2) The ordinary conditions 
in both the wholesale and the custom trade are thus 
made a fundamental part of the instruction. Reality 
of this kind helps the supervisors to judge the product 
from its trade value (amateur work will thus be re- 
jected), and the teaching from the kind of workers 
turned out. Through the business relation the students 



ORGANIZATION AND WORK 23 

quickly feel the necessity of good finish, rapid work, 
and responsibility to deliver on time. (3) The orders 
bring in a money return and thus aid the school in the 
expense for material. (4) The businesslike appear- 
ance of the shops at work on the orders and the ex- 
perience trade has had with the product have increased 
the confidence of employers of labor in the ability of the 
school to train practical workers for the trades. The 
school is constantly urged by trade to increase its order 
work, but its unfaltering policy is to take only the 
amount needed for educational purposes. (5) The 
business organization and management required in the 
adequate conduct of a large order department can itself 
be utilized for educational purposes, and has its value 
for training students who show promise of becoming 
good stock clerks. 

Trade workers are employed in the business shops 
connected with the various departments. These assist- 
ants have proved their value in making the best utiliza- 
tion of the order work. They facihtate the completion 
of the work on time and help train the girls to feel 
responsible for their share of it. As the students work 
slowly at first, and as their hours in the shops are 
interrupted by other studies, the trade workers, when 
necessary, continue with or complete the articles while 
the girls are absent. They make possible the tradelike 
organization of the shops, for each one has around her 
her own little groups of assistants, and she teaches them 
while she also works. Constant repetition of the same 
process ceases, after a time, to be valuable to a student, 
hence her time must not be wasted by too simple work 



24 THE MAKING OF A TRADE SCHOOL 

or by unnecessary details. It often happens also that 
an article may require expert work in its completion 
which the students cannot yet do; the trade workers 
select for each girl the process which will be of value 
to her, and then do the work the students cannot do or 
should not do. 

The following lists will show the class of orders 
which have been demanded by trade and turned out 
by the school : 

Operating Department Orders: i. Trade Work: Ribbon 
run on webbing for suspenders, infants' dresses — 
eight different styles, children's aprons — two differ- 
ent styles, hemstitching and embroidery for yokes, 
ruffling — hem and hemstitched, faggotting, 

2. Individual Custom Orders : Dressing sacques, aprons 
(kitchen, gingham, and work), gymnasium suits, 
waists, children's dresses, corset covers, drawers, 
skirts and chemise, sheets, pillowslips, curtains, 
straw hats, fancy petticoats, kimonos, handkerchiefs, 
fancy neckwear, infants' outfits, boys' waists, quilt- 
ing, hemstitching by yard, silk waists and dresses 
hemstitched, tucking by yard, waists, collars, cuffs, 
and cloth embroidered, initials on linen and mono- 
grams on saddle cloths, ruffling by yard. 

3. Order Work for Other Departments : Dressmaking : 
Machine work on nightgowns, corset covers, drawers, 
combination suits, petticoats, kimonos, gymnasium 
bloomers, swimming suits, buttonholes, hemstitch- 
ing on silk skirts, dresses, waists; Bonnaz embroid- 
ery on dresses, waists. Millinery : Veils hemstitched. 
Art: Pencil and brush cases. Office: Coats and 
overalls for janitors employed in school. 

Dressmaking Department Orders: Aprons, petticoats, 
maids' dresses; machine-made underwear; collars 



ORGANIZATION AND WORK 25 

and neckwear; nurses' uniforms; swimming, bath- 
ing, and gymnasium suits; children's and baby 
clothes ; fine handmade underwear ; plain shirtwaists, 
fine waists, afternoon gowns, street suits, evening 
gowns, cloth suits tailored. 

Pasting and Novelty Orders: Mounting suspender web- 
bing, mounting corset samples, pasting suspender 
tabs and sockets, case making. Desk sets, lamp- 
shades, and candleshades. 

Art Department Orders: i. Trade Order Work: Stamp- 
ing, perforating, coloring fashion plates, stencil 
cutting. 

2. Custom Work: Stenciling curtains, scarfs, table 
covers, sofa pillows; designing patterns for em- 
broidery for table covers, doilies, bags, buttons, 
shirtwaists, skirts, parasols, and chiffon scarfs. 

3. Order Work for Other Departments : Decorating 
book covers, desk sets, boxes, dress trimmings — 
panels, lapels, vests ; collars and cuffs, insertions for 
hand and machine; banding for hats, letters, mono- 
grams : designs for doilies, scarfs, curtains, work- 
bags. 

PLACEMENT BUREAU 

From the first the school made some provision for 
placing its pupils satisfactorily in the trades for which 
they are trained. Originally the heads of departments 
attended to it, each for her own students, but as the 
school grew and the department work increased this 
method ceased to be practical. An arrangement was made, 
therefore, with the Alliance Employment Bureau to place 
the girls of the Manhattan Trade School when they were 
ready to leave the school or whenever they applied for 
help thereafter. This was a most helpful connection 



26 THE MAKING OF A TRADE SCHOOL 

when the work was beginning, but it was understood 
that when the school reached the point in its develop- 
ment where the volume of business was great enough, 
and other conditions warranted it, a Placement Bureau 
should be opened in the school itself. This long-cherished 
idea went into operation in October, 1908, when a Place- 
ment Secretary was engaged and the school bureau was 
opened. This plan has already proved advantageous. 
In the first place a bureau so situated can, by keeping 
in constant touch with the departments, obtain intimate 
and detailed information about the character, the work, 
the special aptitudes, and the physique of each girl. Such 
data are extremely valuable in making wise placements, 
but are difficult of access for an outside agency. In the 
second place such a school bureau, open to graduates, 
tends to bring them occasionally to it, and thus strength- 
ens their interest in and loyalty to the school by giving 
a practical reality to their connection with it. 

Aims 

The aims and working plans of the Placement Bureau 
are the following: (i) To secure suitable positions for 
girls leaving the school — those forced out by poverty 
a'S well as those who have really completed their courses. 
The problem is to get the square peg into the square 
hole, and it is solved by having a very intimate know- 
ledge of each peg, and by knowing of as large a variety 
of holes as possible from which to choose. (2) To be 
a means of connection and communication between the 
school and the trades, on the one hand, and the school 
and its former pupils on the other. (3) To gather data 



ORGANIZATION AND WORK 2/ 

about trade conditions that shall be helpful to the several 
departments, or in deciding school poHcies. (4) To 
build up a series of records that shall be of general 
sociological value as well as of immediate use for school 
purposes. 

Kinds and Methods of Work 

In connection with the placement itself there are four 
lines of activity: 

1. Interviews in the office, when girls come in to 
apply for positions, and when employers ask for workers. 
Much valuable data as to the experiences of the girls 
who have been some time in the trade have been gathered 
in this way. In the case of the employer, if he is not 
already familiar with the school, an effort is made to 
induce him (or her) to go through it. 

2. Trade Visits of investigation. It is the policy 
of the Bureau not to place a girl in any establishment 
until it has been visited, unless it is one already well 
known to the school, in which case the visit may follow 
instead of preceding the placement. These visits are 
often made upon the request of employers or in response 
to advertisements, if, as sometimes happens, a girl wishes 
to be placed and the employers already known do not 
need additional help. 

3. "Following up'' After the girls are placed it is 
necessary to keep track of them. In order to do this 
satisfactorily, blanks have been printed in two different 
forms, one for the employer and the other for the 
worker. The former asks about the quality of the girl's 
work (whether it is satisfactory, and if not, why not) 



28 THE MAKING OF A TRADE SCHOOL 

and about her wages. The latter asks the girl to report 
on her work, wages, and shop conditions. By this sys- 
tem the Placement Secretary is able to keep in close 
touch with the students who have been placed, and to 
hear and act upon complaints from either employer or 
girl with a promptness that often has the result of estab- 
lishing the worker in a "good" place or, occasionally, 
rescuing her from a poor one. Employers are almost 
uniformly prompt and courteous in returning the reports, 
and all but a very small percentage of the students are 
equally responsive. In cases where a girl is not heard 
from, the Students' Aid Secretary makes a personal visit 
to her home. 

4. Keeping of Records. Card catalogues are kept, 
giving the full data obtainable in each case: (i) for 
girls applying for positions; (2) for girls placed; 
(3) for employers visited; (4) for employers applying 
or worth investigating, but not yet visited. All data 
from employers and girls which have been obtained from 
the blanks before mentioned or from other sources are 
recorded on the cards. 

The Placement Bureau, in addition to its specific 
work, performs certain services for the general benefit 
of the school. Data are obtained as to the conditions of 
work and wage in certain trades and the length of train- 
ing advisable in others. Advice from the trade is often 
needed in one or another of the departments, and 
through the Bureau's acquaintance with employers, 
managers, or foremen and forewomen, it is able to 
ascertain and report their expert opinion. It is also 
possible to induce some of these busy people to come 



ORGANIZATION AND WORK 



29 



and view the problem in the Hght of conditions at the 
school as well as in their own business. 



General Results 

Although the Placement Bureau is still in its infancy, 
some results may be recorded. It is already in touch 
with some 700 employers, about 550 having been per- 
sonally visited. The table below gives the facts as to 
placements in former years, and may be interesting for 
comparison. 

Girls Placed and Reported Upon 



By Self or 
School. 



By Alliance 

Employment 

Bureau. 



Total. 



1902 

1903 

1904 

1905 

1906 

1907 

1908 

1909 By school 



o 
39 
52 
29 
22 
10 
119 
157 



o 
7 
36 
61 
81 
77 
39 
I 



428 



o 
46 
88 
90 
[03 

87 
[58 
[58 



302 



730 



This refers merely to the original or first placement 
of a girl. The total of r^-placements for 1909 was an 
additional 230, including those of many former pupils 



30 



THE MAKING OF A TRADE SCHOOL 



who had heretofore placed themselves or been placed 
by the Alliance Employment Bureau. 

The crucial question of wages is one that is extremely 
difficult to deal with in brief. The accompanying table 
gives a very general statement as to the range of wages 
obtained by graduates and the future possibilities in 
their trades, and read in the light of the comment below 
it is as specifically accurate as any "summary" can be. 



Trade. 


Wages When 
First Placed. 


After Two to 
Five Years. 


Future 
Possibilities. 




1903 


1909 






Dressmaking . 


$3 to ^5 


$4 to $6 


$6 to ^13 


^25 or own 
establishment 


Millinery . . 


2.50 to 4 


4 


5 to 15 


12 to 25 or own 
establishment 


Operating . . 


3 to 6 


4 to II 


6 to 25 


15 to 40 


Novelty . . . 


4 to 5 


4 to 9* 


6 to II 


18 to 25 


Art since 1907 


5 to 8 


4 to 7 


7 to 15 • 


20 to 30 



* This maximum is not in paste or glue work, but in the silk lampshade trade. 



The column for 1909 shows that at last a minimum 
wage of $4.00 has been established for all the trades 
named, even Millinery. There are exceptions, but they 
are almost always due to some special disability on the 
part of the girl, and do not fairly affect a statement 
regarding the wage for girls of normal capacity, who 
have done satisfactory work during their course. The 
small percentage of pupils who fall below $4.00 for their 



ORGANIZATION AND WORK 



31 



initial wage are those who either did not complete the 
school course, or who did poor work, or who are sub- 
normal mentally or handicapped physically, or can work 
only an eight-hour day because they are under sixteen. 
It is true that when they are obliged to start on piece- 
work instead of a week-wage their earnings may fall 
below our minimum for a short time, but the first week 
or two is in that case not usually a fair test of the 
girl's training or ability. Some little time is necessary 
for the readjustment involved in the change from school 
to workroom, and especially for attaining the "speed" 
necessary to earn a fair wage on trade piece-rates. The 
compensating advantage is that when she does begin to 
"make good" her improvement is usually registered in 
her earnings more quickly and accurately than it would 
be by the safe but slowly advancing "week- work." 
If after two weeks, however, the girl is earning less 
than $4.00, and thinks she "never can make out there," 
she is given an opportunity to change her place. But 
very often there is a sudden jump in earnings after ten 
days or so, as the girl gains confidence and speed. (One 
pupil earned $3.97 her first week on buttonholes, and 
over $7.00 the second.) Another point to be considered 
in connection with the wage is the length of the season 
and the duration of any one place. The comparatively 
steady work and regular, if small, advance in the dress- 
making, for instance, will often counterbalance the larger 
week-wage or piece-work earnings of the trades where 
the season is short or the positions of uncertain duration. 
On the "rate of advance" in wage the Bureau is as 
yet too young to make any general statements. 



32 THE MAKING OF A TRADE SCHOOL 

Students' Aid 

On account of the extreme poverty in the families 
of many of the students, some system of aid has always 
been necessary. The manner of giving it has changed, 
however, that it may be free from all tendency to pauper- 
ize or to deprive the recipient of self-respecting effort. 
At first it took the form of a scholarship, paid at the 
school every week, in equal amounts, to each student. 
A few months' experience, however, showed that it would 
be better to require a month's apprenticeship without 
pay. If after that the girl was allowed to continue her 
course, she was given a dollar a week during her second 
month. Each month thereafter the amount was increased 
according to the skill and good spirit which were evident 
in her work. The maximum amount a student could 
receive in one year was $ioo. 

Early in the second year it became clear that a still 
more radical change was advisable, and a plan was 
adopted whereby the need of the girl's family became 
the only basis upon which money was given. A commit- 
tee was formed, whose membership was composed prin- 
cipally of workers from the leading social settlements. 
Each applicant for aid was referred to the member of 
the committee living nearest her home. An investigation 
was made by the settlement worker, and aid was given 
in proportion to the necessity, varying in amount from 
car fare to the equivalent of a small wage. The girl 
went weekly to the settlement for the money. In this 
way the aid was separated as far as possible from the 
school atmosphere, and it was made clear to the girls 



ORGANIZATION AND WORK 33 

and their families that the money was in no sense pay 
for work. As indicative of this change in viewpoint, 
the term "Scholarship" was replaced by that of "Stu- 
dents' Aid." In addition to its other advantages, the 
new method reduced the cost for aid to less than one- 
half of its original proportion. 

Since this time the aim has been always the same — 
to aid the girl handicapped by poverty so that she might 
prepare herself for efficient wage-earning. A member 
of the school staff is secretary of the Students' Aid 
Committee, and she knows personally every applicant 
wishing aid, and makes the initial visits and investiga- 
tions. This plan has proved advantageous in making a 
closer connection between the school and the home, and 
in securing a more uniform standard of relief. 

The Students' Aid Committee consists at present of 
representatives from sixteen settlements, who meet twice 
a month to discuss and decide upon the merit of each 
applicant. If aid is granted, the girl is assigned to the 
settlement nearest her home and goes there weekly for 
her money. An envelope showing the amount due the 
girl is sent from the school to the settlement worker, 
and on this is indicated any absence or tardiness. It is 
one of the duties of the member of the committee to 
inquire the reasons for any irregularity in attendance, 
and, if necessary, to report to the parent. In addition, 
each settlement worker renders valuable service by 
giving friendly oversight to the girls and families in 
her group, by doing as much for their welfare as time 
will allow, and by reporting any unusual conditions to 
the Students' Aid Secretary. 



34 THE MAKING OF A TRADE SCHOOL 

Students are at times sent to the school for instruc- 
tion with a request for aid from some charitable 
institution, church, hospital, school, or settlement which 
knows and is interested in the family; but, in general, 
a girl needing financial help comes without such recom- 
mendations, and consequently a more thorough investi- 
gation of the case is necessary. Inquiry is always made 
at first of the Charity Organization Society, in order to 
learn whether her family has received or is receiving 
other relief. The "trial month" without aid gives time 
for the gathering of facts about the family, and for a 
test of the girl's ability and character. Aid is never 
promised to a girl before her admission. 

A useful method has been worked out for deter- 
mining the amount of aid which may be given in any 
one case. The total amount of the family income is 
obtained, and from it are deducted the fixed expenses 
for rent, insurance, and car fare. From the remainder 
the per capita income is found which must provide for 
all other expenses, that is, for each person's share of 
food, clothing, light, fuel, medicine, and all incidentals. 
It was estimated that a family could not maintain a 
decent standard of living on a per capita income of less 
than $1.50 a week. Although each case is considered 
on its merits, aid is almost always given when the per 
capita income is less than $1.50; in some special cases 
it is granted when the income exceeds this amount. 
The following table shows the income of the seventy- 
eight families that were being aided by the school on 
June 3, 1909. 



ORGANIZATION AND WORK 



35 



Weekly per Capita 
Income. 


Number of Families. 


$ .00 to 


$ .49 


16 


.50 to 


•99 


26 


1. 00 to 


1.49 


20 


1.50 to 


1.99 


10 


2.00 to 


2.49 


3 


2.50 to 


2.99 




3.00 to 


3-49 


2 



Relief given by charitable institutions has not been 
included in this income. 

Each girl receiving aid is told the reason for its 
bestowal in such a way that she will neither look upon 
it as money earned nor feel humiliated as a recipient of 
charity, but will understand that it should mean for her 
an opportunity to obtain a good education. It there- 
fore is incumbent upon her to show a realization of its 
value by becoming a responsible and earnest worker. 
Students receiving such assistance are expected to attend 
regularly, unless for excellent reasons, and the reports 
from their departments must be satisfactory in regard 
to their work, attitude, and effort. If a girl varies from 
this standard and, after talking with her or with one 
of her parents, no improvement follows, the aid may be 
suspended or withdrawn. Improving circumstances in 
a family occasionally make it possible to decrease or even 
to give up the aid. On the other hand, it is often found 



36 THE MAKING OF A TRADE SCHOOL 

necessary to ask additional assistance from special phil- 
anthropic sources when the need is very great. 

Night Classes 

Night continuation classes are a part of the aim of 
the school. They have offered training in expert parts 
of the Operating, Dressmaking, Novelty, Millinery, and 
Art trades. The classes were well attended, the work 
successful, and continued application for the renewal 
of the instruction has been received. This class of 
education requires the most skilled teachers and is con- 
sequently expensive. Lack of money to conduct both 
the day and the night work adequately has made it 
necessary to close the night classes temporarily. There 
is every reason to hope, however, that they will be re- 
opened in the near future, with still greater facilities 
for teaching the advanced parts of the trades. 

Student Government 

The Student Council concerns itself with the govern- 
ment of the school, the aim being to place it as far as 
possible in the hands of the students. It also assists 
in developing their sense of responsibility. The Council 
is composed of representatives elected from each class, 
who have been chosen for their executive ability and 
good character. They meet once a week with one of the 
supervisors to discuss questions of general school dis- 
cipline and regulations. Each member is responsible 
for maintaining order in her class when it is not under 
other supervision, for settling disputes among the girls, 
and for reporting disobedience to school laws. 



ORGANIZATION AND WORK 37 

Graduate and Department Clubs 

Some form of alumnae association has been in exist- 
ence since the end of the first school year. This 
important phase of the Trade School work is now 
thoroughly organized, and gains for us the v/arm co- 
operation of those who have benefited by the instruction. 
The Graduate Association includes those who have 
received the certificate of the school; the department 
clubs, however, are more democratic, and admit to mem- 
bership any girl who has been in attendance. These 
associations work together for the benefit of the school. 
They hold frequent business as well as social meetings. 
They plan definite ways for getting in touch with Man- 
hattan Trade School girls who are just entering trade, 
in order to help them to adjust themselves to their work 
and to increase in them loyalty and responsibility to the 
school; for improving themselves and working girls in 
general by discussing topics of interest concerning their 
trades, and by giving entertainments which are of real 
interest and value. They have carried out schemes for 
adding to the general finances of the school or for 
obtaining money for special objects, such as shower baths 
for the gymnasium. They have given several suppers 
to bring the faculty and former students together, in 
order to discuss informally trade and school matters. 



PART II 
REPRESENTATIVE PROBLEMS ^ 

The organizing of a girls' trade school in any given 
locality necessitates the meeting of many problems of a 
serious nature. Some of these appear immediately and 
require consideration before a satisfactory curriculum 
can be developed, but most of them are hydra-headed, 
and one phase is no sooner settled than another arises. 
Attention must be given to them whenever they come if 
any progress is to be made in solving the question of the 
broadest and yet most practical education for the girl 
who must earn her living in trade. These problems are 
so connected with the keenest yet most obscure social 
and industrial questions of the day on one hand, and, 
on the other, with the future of the race, that they are 
often very puzzling. Some of them can never be entirely 
settled, though they can be temporarily adjusted to imme- 
diate needs. The following are selected as representative. 

Direct Trade Training 

Many schools of a domestic or technical nature have 
been opened in the United States, but the instruction in 
them is for the home or for educational purposes rather 
than for business. The trades, if they are represented 
at all in these schools, are general in character, covering 
often many branches of an industry in a short series of 

1 In order to explain these problems, it will be necessary to repeat 
some of the data in Part I. 

38 



REPRESENTATIVE PROBLEMS 39 

lessons, and not having the particular subdivisions and 
special equipment which are found at present in the 
regular market. Employers of labor have not been favor- 
ably impressed with the practical usefulness of the 
graduates in their workrooms. As the sole reason for 
the existence of the Manhattan Trade School is to meet 
this requirement of employers, and therefore to develop 
a better class of wage-earners directly adapted to trade 
needs, the instruction must be in accord with methods 
in the shops and factories of New York City. Such 
specific trade education for fourteen-year-old girls was 
new, and therefore the problem of organization had to 
be faced for the first time in America. Careful study of 
the workrooms and the industrial conditions of New 
York City was essential before the aims or the curricu- 
lum could be decided upon and the school could be 
opened for instruction. Furthermore, if the training 
is to be kept up to date this study of trade conditions 
must not cease, and readjustments of the curriculum 
must equal the changes taking place in the outside 
workrooms. Consequently these problems must be met 
repeatedly. 

Need of Preliminary Training 

On beginning the trade courses at the school a diffi- 
culty was discovered immediately which brought home 
the truth of the complaint made by trade that young 
workers are utterly incompetent. The students coming 
to the school were allowed by law to enter trade, as 
they had met all requirements for obtaining their work- 
ing papers, but they were not found to have sufficient 



40 THE MAKING OF A TRADE SCHOOL 

foundation to begin the first simple steps at the school 
without some preliminary training. The defects which 
were especially evident were: (i) lack of sufficient skill 
with the hand; (2) inability to utilize their public school 
academic work in practical trade problems; (3) dull- 
ness in taking orders and in thinking clearly of the needs 
which arise; (4) absence of ideals; and (5) need of 
knowledge of the laws of health and how to apply them. 
PreHminary, elementary instruction in all of these sub- 
jects had, therefore, to be organized and given to the 
entering students before they could begin upon their 
true trade work. Such instruction is and will continue 
to be necessary unless the public elementary school 
arranges to give, between the fifth and eighth grades, a 
more satisfactory preparation to those who must earn 
their living. The Manhattan Trade School has been 
obliged to give from two to eight months to elementary 
branches of instruction alone. The kind of work needed 
varies constantly with the condition of the students. 
Every one requires some of it, but many must take 
months of tutoring. Public instruction could readily 
give the practical academic work which the school has 
organized. Such instruction would not only directly help 
the pupils who must leave early to work, but would lay 
a good foundation for the vocational education which 
is being planned for the early years of the public 
secondary schools. 

Vocational Training 

As the courses at the Manhattan Trade School devel- 
oped, an intermediate phase between the preparatory 



REPRESENTATIVE PROBLEMS 4I 

work and the direct trade training took definite shape. 
This middle ground partakes in many ways of trade 
processes and lays a good foundation for shop work. 
It utilizes the early education, gives point to it, awakens 
in the student enthusiasm for her chosen trade, and 
shows her that it is worth her while to work hard if she 
would succeed. It takes from four to eight months, 
according to the student's ability to meet the require- 
ments. Public instruction could also develop this inter- 
mediate field to advantage for those who, not wishing 
to enter the regular high school course, would be glad 
to avail themselves of further practical education. Such 
occupations for women as cooking, sewing, garment and 
dressmaking, millinery, laundry work, home nursing, 
household administration, care of children, novelty work, 
electric power operating, salesmanship, and other inter- 
esting activities can well be offered in Vocational Educa- 
tion. As the student in her chosen field plans, considers 
expenses, and contrives to utilize her material she gains 
skill, adaptability, judgment, and the* true basis of criti- 
cism. The world's work interests her as its meaning 
becomes clear through her own experiences, and she 
begins to see ways to better her condition and to be a 
factor in the improvement of her home. She appreciates 
the value of her early education, and finds it worth while 
to think clearly and to act wisely; she listens to instruc- 
tions, asks sensible directions, and goes to work without 
waste of time. The elementary and intermediate train- 
ing just described, which the school found it must give 
preparatory to its real trade instruction, has proved 
advantageous as an introduction, for the student can 



42 THE MAKING OF A TRADE SCHOOL 

now quickly adapt herself to the work in the school shops, 
as she possesses the foundation qualities needed to make 
the best worker. She has to begin at the simplest trade 
work, to be sure, but can rise as rapidly as she shows 
ability. She has been carefully watched by her instruc- 
tors and turned gradually in the direction best fitted to 
her. 

Trade Shops 

Offering courses in many varieties of trade work 
exactly as they are found in a city like New York has 
many recurring difficulties, as has been before stated. 
The constant and rapid adaptations to fashion, the new 
mechanical devices introduced, and the labor situations 
are factors to be considered. The management must be 
ready at a moment's notice to change, increase, or drop 
work according to the demands of a fickle market. It 
would seem, therefore, that at present the problems of 
the school trade shops are of too serious and unsettled 
a character for adequate solution by public instruction 
as at present organized, for (i) it would be difficult to 
persuade the mass of taxpayers that added tax rates are 
advisable for beginning a continually altering form of 
education which has not yet commended itself to all 
employers or to all wage-earners, and which must be 
more or less expensive; (2) the usual public school 
committee man knows little of trade conditions, and 
would probably be averse to allowing a school the 
freedom to change at will its course of study and even 
the very trades it teaches ; yet, on the other hand, if the 
trade school must wait for board action before altering 
its plans, it would prejudice the value of its instruction. 



REPRESENTATIVE PROBLEMS 43 

which must be flexible if it would train its students 
directly for the market; (3) the impossibility of obtain- 
ing its teachers from the usual "waiting list" and the 
difficulties attending the selection of a satisfactory 
teaching force. 

The possibilities for offering highly specialized, 
skilled work are great, but the poverty of the students 
limits their time at the day school. To help all girls 
who work, and who wish to get ahead, night classes 
have been organized from time to time, and during the 
day also temporary instruction is offered to any one who 
has a slack time in her trade. As the school is organized 
into trade shops, with the same specialization as in the 
market, a student can enter or be placed from almost 
any point. This increases its usefulness but complicates 
its management. 

Obtaining and Training Teachers 

As trade instruction is new in education, the normal 
schools have not begun training teachers regularly for 
these positions, nor, indeed, are they yet prepared to do 
so. The organizer of a trade school faces, therefore, a 
serious difficulty in obtaining instructors who are ade- 
quate to the task before them. 

The following trade teaching staff is needed: super- 
visors of the various trades; forewomen to direct the 
school shops; trade instructors to teach the various 
groups of students the specialized processes; assistants 
to attend to minor matters in the workrooms; art 
teachers, who have had experience in designing for the 
various trades represented; academic instructors who 



44 THE MAKING OF A TRADE SCHOOL 

know the working world practically and can give the 
students a training which, while helping them in their 
trades, will broaden their knowledge of and sympathy 
in the world's work. All of these teachers must not 
only have had experience in trade, but must continually 
keep in touch with the methods of the outside market. 
Unsuccessful trade workers, who often wish to teach, 
or teachers who know nothing of the needs of trade 
workrooms, cannot adequately prepare students for 
specific trade positions. Trade knows what it wants, 
is a severe critic and an unsparing judge. The trade 
school, therefore, cannot afford to rely on instructors 
who would be themselves unsuccessful in the market, 
for the result would be certain failure in the students. 
Such specific training requires exceptional knowledge in 
its teaching force. The usual teacher of manual train- 
ing knows too little of the ways of the workrooms and 
is too theoretical in her instruction to be trusted to train 
workers who must satisfy trade demands. On the other 
hand, the trade worker, good as she may be in her spe- 
cialty, seldom knows how to teach. She can drive her 
group of workers, but she cannot train the green hands 
to do more than work quickly at one thing. She can 
make them work, but she cannot make them better 
workers. When she has orders to turn out, her lifelong 
training makes her think of the rapid completion of the 
articles rather than the careful development of the stu- 
dents who are making them. If she is not watched she 
will choose the girl to do a piece of work who can do 
it well and quickly (but who does not need this experi- 
ence), rather than the one who should do it in order to 
have practice in it. 



REPRESENTATIVE PROBLEMS 45 

The problem is to find a way to unite the good teacher 
and the successful worker. Such a combination appears 
at rare intervals. At the present time the teacher who 
can adequately prepare young workers for trade has to 
be taught while she is herself teaching. She may be 
chosen from either the industrial or the educational field, 
if she has certain qualities of mind and spirit, but she 
must now make up the points she lacks, be it experience 
in trade or ability to teach. Supervisors need special 
insight and capability, as they are called upon to investi- 
gate a new and difficult field, to select from it the subjects 
needed, and after that to organize education of a most 
practical kind. They combine the duties of school prin- 
cipal, teacher, forewoman, factory superintendent, and 
business manager. They must be willing to give them- 
selves to the cause, as they are responsible for the 
conduct of their departments throughout the year, at 
night as well as during the day, at least until they can 
train some one to whom they can delegate some of their 
responsibility. They need a broad, cultural education 
and, at the same time, interest and knowledge of the 
industrial problems of the time, as well as experience 
in their particular trade. They must have sympathy 
with the working people and their lives. It is evident 
that such women are hard to find, and when found or 
when trained are in demand by other institutions or in 
business life, in which places they can command high 
salaries. All efficient trade teachers also are equally in 
demand in workrooms, hence the school must compete 
with good business salaries in place of the usual under- 
pay of educational institutions. 



46 THE MAKING OF A TRADE SCHOOL 

In addition to the trade teachers, practical instructors 
in healthful living and special secretaries needing social 
knowledge of various kinds are also essential in the 
modern trade school for girls. Their training adds to 
the director's responsibilities, for no one at present has 
the knowledge and experience necessary. 

The many problems connected with obtaining an 
adequate teaching staff seem at present to have but one 
solution, i. e., the school has to be its own training school 
for its faculty to a greater or less extent. One source 
of assistant teachers has been found in students who 
have made good in trade. Pupils of fair education who 
show skill and executive ability in their department work 
and who later succeed in their trade positions have 
already proved helpful when brought back to the school. 
Such girls know the courses of instruction, their needs 
and difficulties, and also the outside workroom demands. 
If they are given some hints in methods of teaching, 
their success is greater. European trade schools for girls 
have drawn many of the best teachers from the student 
body and have organized teachers' training classes for 
them. A course of regular training for trade pupil 
teachers should be given later in American training 
schools to meet this situation. 

Courses of Study- 
As the changes about to occur in the market must 
be recognized and inserted in the curriculum in time for 
the students to be prepared for the new work when they 
are placed, set courses of study cannot be followed with- 
out endangering the practical value of the teaching. 



REPRESENTATIVE PROBLEMS 47 

Furthermore, the pupils must be advanced as they show 
abihty, and their different characteristics should have 
consideration ; hence the work must be sufficiently flexible 
and adaptable to allow for increasing one kind of train- 
ing and decreasing another, in order to develop a girl's 
best ability. It is not the trade courses onl). which 
should be fitted to the need, but the trade-art, trade- 
academic, and physical education must also shift and 
introduce needed material as quickly as would the market 
grasp at new plans for the workrooms. Nor is it suffi- 
cient that the curriculum should adapt itself merely to 
training girls for trade positions. It is never to be for- 
gotten that these students are to be made into higher 
grade workers and citizens, and that the greater number 
of them will marry. In general, it can be said that 
woman's entrance into industry is more or less tempo- 
rary in that it is apt to precede or to follow marriage, 
and, as a rule, is not continuous. Good citizenship for 
these young wage-earners should mean the better home 
as well as the broader views of industrial life. The 
inserting into an already too brief training the impor- 
tant factors for making the better home-keeper requires 
study of the ethics and economics of home and social 
life in addition to the study of the industrial situation, 
and places continuous problems before the faculty. 

Investigations 

In order to be in vital touch with the practical needs 
and changes of the market, special investigations of trade 
have been and are continually conducted by the faculty 
of the school. Effort is made by them also to keep in 



48 THE MAKING OF A TRADE SCHOOL 

close contact with industrial and social organizations of 
workers in settlements, clubs, societies, and unions, that 
all phases of the wage-earner's life, pleasures, aims, and 
needs, may be appreciated. The pupils in attendance 
are studied to know their conditions of health, their 
tendencies, their needs, their improvement. After their 
entry into trade they are kept in touch with the school 
through the Placement Bureau, clubs, graduate associa- 
tions, and also by visits from the school's investigator, 
in order to note the effect of their training on their 
self-support, their workrooms, and their homes. Groups 
of trained and untrained girls are compared, that differ- 
ences and benefits may be noted and the true situation 
may be clearly understood. 

That the essentials of this class of education might 
be grasped as far as possible, the director of the school 
made a six months' investigation of the professional 
schools for girls on the continent of Europe. This study 
was made after the Manhattan Trade School had been 
organized and was running successfully. The problems 
were then well in hand, and advantage could be taken 
the better of differing standpoints. In some European 
countries such practical instruction has been established 
for half a century. Each country has organized the work 
according to its own view of woman's position in indus- 
trial and domestic life. Many aspects of the problem 
can therefore be studied and various courses of instruc- 
tion consulted. This investigation covered three inter- 
esting fields. First, the organization of the schools, 
including the equipment ; the teachers and their training ; 
the budget; the order work; the relation of the school 



REPRESENTATIVE PROBLEMS 49 

to employers; the placing of the girls in positions; the 
wages; the schemes for financial aid, and the work of 
the alumnae associations. Second, the trades taught and 
the courses of instruction ; the general education required 
at entrance and that given as an integral part of trade; 
the trade-art courses; the housekeeping and training of 
servants ; the development of ideas of better living and the 
training for responsibility in home and trade life. Third, 
the visiting of workrooms employing women ; the obtain- 
ing information on the effect of trade schools; the stu- 
dents' usefulness and ability to advance, and a survey 
of the crafts conducted in the homes of the people. 

Trade Order Administration 

A trade school must do its skilled handwork in the 
fashion of the day and on correct materials, yet the 
students are too poor to work for themselves. A school 
budget cannot supply such large quantities of valuable 
materials unless it can get some return for them. The 
school shop in each department, where orders both private 
and custom are taken, has proved advantageous, but 
involves great problems of administration: (i) the 
actual business methods and management connected with 
the invoices, sales, and delivery of goods; (2) the obtain- 
ing of orders needed and of the quantity desirable; 
(3) the taking of custom orders, fitting the customer, 
and delivery of orders on time; (4) a satisfactory appor- 
tionment of the order work so that the students may 
profit by it and not be expected to continue it after they 
have had sufficient experience of one kind, or if they 
are not yet able to do the elaborate work involved; 



50 THE MAKING OF A TRADE SCHOOL 

(5) the finding of operatives who will do what the stu- 
dents cannot or should not do; (6) the expense involved 
in employing workers at trade prices and for shorter 
hours; (7) the cost of articles, and other details which 
are involved in entering into competition with trade. It 
may be stated that no trade school should underbid the 
market, but should charge the full prices and expect to 
give equivalent returns. A trade school cannot afford 
to be an amateur supported by a philanthropic public, 
but must have a recognized business standard. 

Placement 

Problems of varied kinds meet the school in placing 
its students. Each new enactment of child labor or 
industrial laws has its influence. Even a good law will 
sometimes have a temporary serious effect in lowering 
wages or turning capable girls out of satisfactory posi- 
tions. Care must be exercised that students are not 
placed where there is a possibility of running counter 
to the best interests of labor. The desire to place each 
pupil where she can develop to her highest condition 
requires continual knowledge of the market needs and 
of the characteristics of the many girls. Records of 
students entering, studying, and placed, the kinds of posi- 
tions open, and industrial and labor information must be 
kept up to date, yet such data are often hard to secure. 

Trade Union Attitude 

An important question that is always before a trade 
school is the effect the instruction may have on the 
working people. It is difficult for one not continually 



REPRESENTATIVE PROBLEMS $1 

in the midst of the pressure of the actual trade to know 
the many ways that thoughtless advance in trade teach- 
ing may react to the disadvantage of the very ones that 
the school wishes to help. Injury may be done by pre- 
paring too many for certain occupations, filling places 
where a strike is on, replacing well-paid positions with 
trade school girls at a less price, placing the girls at too 
small a wage for their skill, doing order work at too low 
a price or when a strike is on, considering too closely 
the fitting of a worker for the employer's benefit rather 
than for the broadening of her own life, and like thought- 
less actions. The difficulties of the situation are great 
and the solution frequently obscure, but a fair-minded 
school must be in touch with the effort the working 
woman herself has inaugurated to better her condition. 
The apparently unnecessary suspicion with which the 
laboring class regards the organization of trade instruc- 
tion would have foundation if no thought were given to 
the trade conditions as the working girl sees them. A 
trade school for fourteen-year-old girls need not make 
a point of their immediate entrance into unions, but it 
should consider the subject simply and wisely in all its 
bearings, that the students may know the full aims and 
advantages of cooperation as well as the point of view 
and many difficulties of the employers. 

Contact with Trade 

The faculty of a trade school needs the cooperation 
and assistance of the working people and the employers 
of labor. Only through intimate interrelation with them 
can the best and most practical results be obtained. 



52 THE MAKING OF A TRADE SCHOOL 

Auxiliaries and committees of employers and of wage- 
earners ; visits of the staff of the school to trade, and of 
employers, forewomen, and workers to the school; the 
carrying out of orders for workrooms and assisting them 
at busy seasons, are some of the ways by which the 
Manhattan Trade School has tried to gain the help of 
the busy industrial world. 

Problems of Financial Aid 

The aid given to enable the poorest students to attend 
the school has brought its own questions, such as: the 
danger of pauperizing the recipients; the methods of 
selecting the beneficiaries ; the best way to give the weekly 
aid; the development of a spirit of earnest work and 
regular attendance in the girls thus aided; the stimula- 
tion of a desire to return some equivalent in special 
helpfulness to the Manhattan Trade School or to its 
students, and the eliminating of this philanthropic effort 
from any apparent relation to school work. 



PART III 
EQUIPMENT AND SUPPORT 

Housing and Equipment 

The first home of the Manhattan Trade School was 
a large four-story and basement dwelling house, for 
which a rental of $2,100 per annum was paid. The initial 
permanent equipment and first temporary stock provided 
for one hundred students, and cost $9,500. This amount 
was utilized principally for the furnishing of special 
rooms for electric power operating; for sewing; for 
dressmaking; for millinery; for pasting; and for the 
more general equipment of offices, academic and art 
rooms, a kitchen, and a lunch room. The following lists 
show the range of expenses for furnishing the main 
workrooms with necessary equipment: 

Garment or Dressmaking Workroom 

Sewing machines, each ;? 18.00 to ;^7o.oo 

Work, cutting, and ironing tables, each . . . 6.00 to 20.00 upward 

Electric irons, each 7.75 

Gas stove (necessary when electric irons are 

not used), each 2.00 upward 

Cheval glass, each 20.00 to 100.00 upward 

Chairs, each 50 to 3.00 upward 

Exhibition, stock closets, cabinets, and chests 

of drawers, each 10.00 to 100.00 upward 

Fitting stands, each 2.00 to 30.00 upward 

Fitting room (a curtained alcove), each . . . 10.00 upward 
Fitting room (a furnished room), each .... 100.00 upward 

Dress forms, per dozen 30.00 upward 

53 



54 THE MAKING OF A TRADE SCHOOL 

Waist forms, per dozen ^6.00 upward 

Sleeve forms, pair i.oo to 1.50 upward 

Lockers, per running foot 3.00 to 8.00 upward 

A room for twenty workers may be plainly furnished 
at a cost '^f $300 to $500. If a large number of expen- 
sive sewing machines are desired, the estimates must be 
increased by several hundred dollars. The Manhattan 
Trade School has forty foot-power machines of the kinds 
most in use in the workrooms of New York. 

The equipping of a workroom for electric power 
operating, including general and special machines, motor, 
cutting and work tables, cabinets and chairs, will be con- 
siderably more expensive than the one for garment 
making. In the latter, one sewing machine can be used 
by several workers, but in electric operating each worker 
must have her own machine. The electric motor adds 
also to the expense. The minimum cost of equipping a 
shop for twenty workers would be $1,000 to $1,500. The 
necessary equipment would be as follows: 

Electric Operating Workroom 

Plain sewing machines in rows, per head ^22.50 upward 

Troughs for work between the rows and tables for the 

machines (per every two machines) 10.00 

Special machines (two needle, embroidery, lace stitch, 
buttonhole, straw sewing, and the like), each ac- 
cording to kind 3S-^^ to 125.00 

Motor, each 140.00 upward 

Electric cutter, each 25.00 upward 

Cabinets, tables, chairs, and irons, see above 

The Manhattan Trade School has fifty-five plain electric 
sewing machines and thirty-two special machines, as 
follows: three buttonhole, one two-needle, one binding. 



EQUIPMENT AND SUPPORT 55 

one zigzag, five hemstitching, five tucker, four Bonnaz, 
one braider, one hand embroidery, one scalloping, nine 
straw sewing. 

In workrooms conducting trades which use paste, 
gum, and glue, the following special equipment is 
required : 

Glue pots, gas, each ^7.50 upward 

Glue pots, electric, each 21.75 upward 

Hand cutter, each 50.00 upward 

Cabinets, tables, chairs, see above 

The cost of equipping a shop would be from $200 to 
$400. 

Special machines for perforating designs or for 
pleating materials are often needed in teaching the gar- 
ment trades. Wholesale prices can usually be obtained 
when the order is large. Dealers have also shown them- 
selves willing to sell their machines at low prices, to 
loan them, and even to give them to a school which has 
proved its ability to train good workers. 

When it was appreciated that the original quarters 
of the school were too limited, the Board of Adminis- 
trators went to work with great enthusiasm and in a few 
months collected the requisite money and bought a large 
business loft building at 209-213 East 23d Street, at an 
expense of $175,000. To put it in order for work cost 
$5,000 in addition. The former equipment was used 
and $5,000 more was spent for such needed items as: 
machines, $3,200; motor, $352; perforating machine, 
$38 ; additional master clocks, $233 ; chairs and tables, 
$850. The school is furnished in a simple, businesslike 
manner, the equipment merely reproducing good work- 
room requirements, i. e., essentials only. " 



56 THE MAKING OF A TRADE SCHOOL 

The budget for the first year, 1902-1903, was 
$22,094.16, of which the salaries for teachers took about 
one-half and the rent and maintenance covered the other 
half. During this year there were 113 students ad- 
mitted. In 1908-1909, after six years of rapid growth, 
the educational budget is $49,000, or more than double 
the original, of which the salaries are $38,806; the sup- 
plies, $1,710; printing and publishing, $600; mainten- 
ance, $9,900. At the beginning of 1908 there were 254 
students in the school; 689 were registered during the 
year, making a total of 943 girls, being almost nine 
times the number in attendance during the first year. 

The Support 

\The Manhattan Trade School has depended for its 
support entirely upon voluntary contributions. There 
have been few large donations and the donors represent 
all classes of the community — patrons of and workers 
in sociological, economic, philanthropic, and educational 
fields, employers of labor, and auxiliaries of many kinds 
of workers organized for special purposes. The most 
significant help, perhaps, and the largest in proportion 
to its income, has been that of the wage-earners them- 
selves — not only the girl who has benefited by the in- 
struction, but the general mass of women workers. 
These women, knowing the difficulties in their own 
struggle to rise, have shown themselves wilHng to set 
apart weekly a small sum to help young girls to attain 
quickly efficiency through systematic training. The 
auxiliaries of wage-earners are a mainstay of the 
school on account of their helpful enthusiasm, their 



EQUIPMENT AND SUPPORT 57 

practical suggestions, their interest in girls trained there, 
and their regular subscriptions on which the Board o£ 
Administrators can depend. 



PART IV 

OUTLINES AND DETAILED ACCOUNTS 
OF DEPARTMENT WORK 

The Faculty and Staff 

The original staff of the Manhattan Trade School, 
1902-1903, consisted of a Director, an Executive Secre- 
tary, 4 supervisors (Operating, Dressmaking, Pasting, 
and Art), 5 instructors and forewomen, 4 or 5 assist- 
ants and occasional workers, a janitor, and 2 cleaners. 
The present staff, 1909-1910, consists of (i) Office 
Administration, 11 : Director, Executive Secretary, Assist- 
ant Secretary, 2 Stenographers (office and placement), 
Placement Secretary, Investigator, Business Clerk, Buyer, 
and 2 Assistants (records, telephone, etc.). (2) Teach- 
ing Force, Supervisors, and Assistant Supervisors, 7: 
Dressmaking, Dressmaking workroom. Electric Operat- 
ing, Millinery, Novelty, Physical Education, Art. In- 
structors, Teachers, and Forewomen, 1 1 : Academic, 2 ; 
Dressmaking, 3; Operating, 5; Art, i. Assistants, 14: 
Dressmaking, 7; Novelty, 3; Operating, i ; Physical 
Education, 2; Art, i. (3) Doctor. (4) Care of Build- 
ing, 7: Engineer, Janitor, Machinist, Cleaners 2, Ele- 
vator boy, and Night watchman. 

Administration 

Admission Requirements 

I. Age: fourteen to seventeen years. The law 
requires a child to remain in public school until fourteen. 

58 



OUTLINES AND ACCOUNTS 



59 



The Manhattan Trade School has found that under 
fourteen a girl is too immature to specialize in trade 
work, and that over seventeen most girls are too mature 
to fit into the work planned for the majority of the class. 

11. Public School Grade : 5-A or above. The subject 
matter of 5-A grade or its equivalent is required by the 
state before a child can leave to work. If for illness 
or other good cause a girl has not made this grade, she 
is admitted to the Trade School with special permission of 
principal of last school attended, and, while studying her 
trade, the necessary amount of schooling is made up to 
her by special classes and coaching. The Board of Health 
recognizes this substitute. 

Grade of girls admitted since beginning is shown in 
following table : 

Grade upon Leaving School 





1) 
















-o 
















2 























•rt 


« 










1. 


i . 


. 




iJ-M* 


1 




^ a 

> 4> 


^ 


OS 




6S 


§g 


wg 




" 


Jt « 


JS « 


§ y 


2 " 


T3 


.£! « 




.2 u 


-M ^ 




> ^ 


M ;-i 


rt I, 


Wi, 




<u <u 


^ (U 


.2 <u 


5j <u 


.3'(U 


*. U 


k3 « 




P3A. 


f^a^ 


wOh 


WPh 


I^Ah 


OAi 


WAk 


1902 


8 


19 


35 


26 


2 


10 





1903 


II 


18 


19 


29 


6 


15 


2 


1904 


6 


II 


15 


25 


16 


25 


2 


1905 


7 


15 


19 


19 


17 


19 


4 


1906 


8 


16 


20 


23 


17 


^3 


3 


1907 


7 


10 


25 


23 


^5 


18 


2 


1908 


4 


IS 


26 


20 


13 


16 


6 



6o THE MAKING OF A TRADE SCHOOL 

During 1908, 143 older women were admitted to a 
special workroom opened for the "unemployed." 

III. Filing of working papers is required of girls 
under sixteen. 

1. No girl under sixteen can work in New York 
unless she has an Employment Certificate issued by the 
Board of Health, and then only from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., 
or for eight hours daily. 

2. The public school last attended by the girl is 
responsible for her until she is sixteen, or has her work- 
ing papers, or is dismissed to another school. If dis- 
missed to Manhattan Trade School her attendance there 
cannot be made compulsory, and she may attend a few 
days and then leave and work illegally. Our facilities 
for following up such cases are limited. With her work- 
ing papers on file we know she is not evading the law, 
and can dismiss her to work if she is not a success in 
trade lines of training. 

3. Exceptions: Lack of proper birth record, on 
account of foreign birth or failure to make record of it 
by officials, may prevent the obtaining of an Employment 
Certificate. A special provision is made by the Board 
of Health in such cases, and, pending adjustment, the 
girl is admitted upon notice of date of future issuance. 

IV. Reference: Some reliable person's name is re- 
quired of each applying student, in order to have some 
one to communicate with in case of difficulty of any 
kind. 

V. Application in person: Each girl fills out an 
application blank giving name, address, and birthplace 
of self, father, and mother, public school attendance, 



OUTLINES AND ACCOUNTS 



6i 



previous trade experience, if any, trade desired, refer- 
ence. This must be written at the school, for the manner 
in which it is done is a large part of test for admission. 

Times of Admission 

The school year begins in July, but a girl is admitted 
any Monday when there is a vacancy in the department 
she wishes to enter. The following table gives record 
of yearly admission: 



Nov. 2, 1902 (first day) 


20 


Rest of 1902 


93 


1903 


139 


1904 


193 


1905 


239 


1906 


328 


1907 


433 


1908 


689 


1909 


517 


Total 


2,651 



Some of these students did not remain long enough 
to take a thorough training, for home demands made 
even a small wage imperative, and the girl had to 
join the ranks of earners ill prepared. Some were not 
adapted to trade conditions, and soon fell out by the 
way. Many persisted until they took more than the 



62 THE MAKING OF A TRADE SCHOOL 

average twelve months' course, and went into business 
at a proportionately higher wage. 

Records 

1. Attendance : i. Daily, Monday to Friday inclusive. 
The factory method of time cards punched by a clock 
upon entrance and leaving has been adopted as being 
most exact, businesslike, and time saving. It registers 
the exact time when rung, and so indicates tardiness as 
well as absence. 

2. Weekly. A small filing card ruled for fifty-two 
weeks summarizes the daily record of time cards and 
requires the marking attendance only once a week. This 
file is subdivided into departments and again into classes, 
so that the statistics of enrollment are easily gathered. 

II. Individual records: i. Upon admission a record 
card is started for each girl, no matter how long she may 
attend. This contains ( i ) the data given upon the appli- 
cation blank copied in detail; (2) Student Aid, if given, 
amount, date, and remarks. 

2. Upon leaving, entries are made on the same 
card of (i) date and cause of leaving; (2) record in 
different departments — Art, Academic, Trade, and 
Health; (3) certificate — kind, record, date. This is not 
granted until the pupil has proved satisfactory in her 
-trade both in the school and in business; (4) Trade 
Record — upon the, reverse side of the card is the "record 
in trade after leaving school," with columns for date, 
employer, kind of work, wages, remarks. This is kept 
up by the Placement Secretary by frequent visits and 
letters, and gives the basis for many valuable deductions 
as to the practical results of the training. 



OUTLINES AND ACCOUNTS 63 

III. Other records kept in departments are (i) Stu- 
dent Aid: application and information; (2) Health: 
examinations upon entrance and future reexaminations ; 
(3) Department: records of each girl as she passes from 
class to class, such as "attitude," speed, and skill. 

Length of Year 

The school is in session forty-eight weeks each year, 
four weeks being given up to one-week vacations at 
Christmas, Easter, Fourth of July, and Labor Day. The 
summer session is the beginning of the regular work, 
and not a unit for summer training. No one is admitted 
for the summer only, as the time is too short for real 
trade standards to be approached. 

Tuition 

The tuition is absolutely free. The Manhattan Trade 
School aims to reach the poorest girl who has little 
chance to advance rapidly unless some one gives her 
a lift. In order to do this most effectively it is some- 
times necessary to assist her. (See the report of the 
Student Aid Work.) 

Choice of Trade 

A girl upon application can select the trade into 
which she wishes to go. If after a month's trial she 
proves competent, she is allowed to continue; if not, 
she is advised to change to another department or to 
seek employment in work not taught at the Trade School. 
If a girl has no choice of trade because of ignorance of 
possibilities, she is shown the kinds taught and given 



64 THE MAKING OF A TRADE SCHOOL 

a chance to make a selection. If then she is undecided, 
she is advised to take what seems best adapted to the 
time she can spend and the type of girl she appears 
to be. 

Business Management 

However simple a school is, some bookkeeping is 
necessary, and when with the running of the school 
is combined the management of trade order supplies and 
receipts the problem becomes very complicated. (See 
Trade Order Work.) 

I. General: A system of up-to-date bookkeeping of 
General Ledger, Invoice Book, and Daily Exhibit, with 
<ietails worked out in Petty Cash and Maintenance 
Books, has been adopted. These few simple books so 
distribute accounts of expense and receipts that one can 
soon see the standing of the whole school or of a single 
department. All bookkeeping is centralized in one office, 
except the taking of orders and the details of filling 
them, which must be in the hands of the department 
concerned. 

II. Departmental: i. Requisition blanks for pur- 
chases made. 2. Order blank and duplicate for order 
given by customer. 3. Time slips, wherever possible, to 
get exact record of time value of work done. 4. Mate- 
rial slips, to keep account of what has gone into any 
orders. 5. Final billing, to give data for bills sent out 
from main office and duplicate filed there for final 
records. 



OUTLINES AND ACCOUNTS 65 

The Power Machine Operating Department 
Aim 

To train girls to work on sewing machines run by 
electric power and to put a thinker behind every machine 
as its operator. The department hopes by awakening 
intelligent interest in the tool, i. e., the machine, to kindle 
ambition in the workers. It is only through the intelli- 
gent use of the tool and consequent love of work which 
follows that we can look forward to supplying the 
skilled machine workers of the future. This training 
must be given while the girls are in the formative period, 
to develop habits of thought and action which will 
counteract the bad effects upon the worker that follow 
division and subdivision of work, with consequent sub- 
division of ability, which takes place in all factories today. 
When a pupil has been thoroughly trained in the intelli- 
gent use of her tool, when she has learned to construct 
complete garments, if she is then, through force of 
circumstances such as modern production entails, com- 
pelled to carry out one process on the machine indefi- 
nitely, or to make one part of a garment, she still holds 
the balance of power in being prepared to do something 
else when opportunity or necessity demands. 

General Steps in Training 

1. A pupil must be given a short time to adjust 
herself to the workshop environment, consequently she 
is put first at some simple work, such as ripping or cut- 
ting up old garments. This gives her freedom while 
using her hands to look about the workroom and to get 



66 THE MAKING OF A TRADE SCHOOL 

accustomed to the sight as well as to the sound of 
machines in action. 

II. The pupil is taught to control the power by 
which the machine is run, and is then given an intelligent 
understanding of the mechanism of the machine or 
machines she is to operate. 

III. The pupil then begins her regular course of 
work, and her feeling of responsibility of the value of 
time is awakened — that is, her seconds, minutes, and 
hours, days, weeks, and months are now important 
factors in her life, and they may be used for good or 
evil. In the language of the department, time may be 
spent wisely or foolishly, and, while studying at the 
Manhattan Trade School, seven hours out of every day 
of the girl's life is given over to productive work and 
should be accounted for. The department has developed 
its own plan of time payments, which is much like the 
piece-work system employed in trade. Through its re- 
wards for time well spent it makes the fact real to the 
pupils, as no form of punishment could do, that wasted 
time is gone forever. 

The department is divided into five classes, three of 
which must be taken to make an all-round operator, 
namely: Elementary, two months' course; Intermediate, 
four months' course ; Advanced, six months' course. In 
trade, salaries for such positions range from $5 to 
$15. The other two classes train specialists on the 
electric machines, special machines of various kinds, 
straw-sewing machines. Special machine work requires 
from three months to one year in addition to the full 
course of all-round operating. Salaries range from $6 



OUTLINES AND ACCOUNTS 6/ 

to $30. An expert trade worker is in charge of each 
class. 

Course of Work 

Regular Operating Course: 

1. Control of power — learning names and uses of 
parts of machines. Making bags, clothes, and operator's 
equipment. 

2. Straight and bias stitching, equal distance apart. 

3. Spaced bias stitching from given measurements. 

4. Making and turning square corners, stitching 
heavy edge for tension practice. 

5. Machine table apron, using former principles. 
This is used to protect operator from shafting and oil. 

6. Seams : Plain seam, plain and band seam ; French 
seam; bag seam on warp; bag seam, one warp and one 
bias ; bag seam, two biases. 

7. Hemming: Different sized hems turned by hand 
for correct measurements ; hems run through hemmer to 
learn use of attachment and give speed; seams through 
hemmer — bag seam, flat fell. 

8. Quilting: Following designs made by pupils In 
Art Department. Practice for control of power, start- 
ing and stopping machine at given point. 

9. Banding: Straight and bias bands placed by 
measurement from design made in Art Department. 
Practice for edge stitching, turning corners, accuracy of 
measurement. 

10. Advanced seams on cloth and silk: Flannel 
seam, slot seam, umbrella seam. 

11. Yokes made and put on: Round yokes — petti- 
coats; round front and straight back — drawers and 
petticoats; bias yokes — waists; shaped yokes — aprons; 
round yokes — children's dresses; miter corner yoke — 
dresses. 



68 THE MAKING OF A TRADE SCHOOL 

12. Tucking: Free hand tucking for accuracy in 
measuring and use of rule; special tucking on length 
and widths of different materials to give speed and skill 
in handling different fabrics. 

General Construction: Trade Stock and Order Work 
(See Order Work) : Infants' slips, children's underwear; 
children's rompers ; children's dresses ; women's under- 
wear ; shirtwaists ; aprons ; house dresses ; fancy negligees: 

Special Machine Work : 

Buttonholes; tucking; two-needle work; hemstitch- 
ing; Bonnaz (CorneH) embroidery; machine hand em- 
broidery, scalloping. Students of special ability only 
are fitted to take this course. One girl in fifteen has 
usually the requisite application and self-control to 
operate a special machine successfully. Each machine 
is specialized, i. e., does its own particular work and no 
other. Patient attention to little things is required on 
the part of the operator in order that good results may 
be produced. Such machines are supposed to need only 
a hand behind them to guide the work. Our experience 
has proved to us that good results are produced only 
when intelligence and patience are factors. In the fac- 
tories, machinists keep the special machines in order, but 
the school aims to train the operator to keep her own 
machine in good condition, thus saving her valuable 
time. 

Bonnaz (Cornell) embroidery work offers excellent 
opportunities for correlation with the Art Department. 
Both Bonnaz (Cornell) and machine hand embroidery 
must be felt in the muscles before they can be carried 
out on the material, therefore the work with the pencil 
in making designs which are to be carried out on the 
machine is of first importance. Free-hand designs must 
be made first in large, free movements on the machine 



OUTLINES AND ACCOUNTS 60 

until the arm muscles are thoroughly familiar with the 
curve, sweep, and feeling to be executed. After mastery 
of movement and sweep are acquired, the same designs 
may be reduced in size ten or twenty times and the pupil 
will still work them out in perfect rhythm. After the 
mastery of movement is acquired, the cording, braiding, 
and three-thread attachment work are easily learned by 
a pupil who has the necessary mechanical sense. The 
course of Bonnaz (Corneli) work covers: chain stitch, 
lettering, applique work, cording, braiding, three-thread 
work. 

Machine hand embroidery should be given as a 
supplementary course to Bonnaz (Corneli) embroidery. 
It gives excellent training in design and color work. 

Special trade machine straw sewing should also be 
taken up after the regular course in operating. It gives 
splendid exercise for quick handling of material, but 
makes a poor foundation of itself on which to build a 
painstaking, expert, all-round operator. Speed is the 
first requisite in getting a hat properly shaped, as the 
straw braid is flying through the machine at the rate 
of four thousand stitches a minute; hence the general 
operating is given first to the pupil to train her in the 
requisite neatness. As straw-sewing has long slack sea- 
sons, the operator can during such times return to the 
regular operating. 

Dressmaking Department 

Aim 

The aim of the Dressmaking Department is to train 
girls in the elements of the dressmaking trade, in order 



70 THE MAKING OF A TRADE SCHOOL 

to enable them to immediately secure employment as 
improvers and finishers or as assistants on skirts, waists, 
and sleeves, and to give them a preparation which will 
help them eventually to rise to positions of skill and 
responsibility. The training eliminates the errand girl 
and apprenticeship stages, and makes possible a living 
wage at the start. The result is accomplished in from 
nine to seventeen months, the time depending entirely 
upon the capability of the girl, her physical condition, 
her application to her work, her regularity of attendance, 
and her previous training. 

Classes 

The department is divided into three sections: 
(i) The Elementary, which consists of two classes 
for the teaching of simple sewing and machine work. 
This section is rendered necessary by the poor prepara- 
tion of the students at the entrance. It would be not 
only practical but desirable for elementary public and 
industrial schools so to train their students that they 
could omit this part of the Manhattan Trade School 
course. (2) The Vocational. This section also includes 
two classes. The work is tradelike in character, but 
much time has to be given to developing right habits 
of work as well as to learning specific kinds of hand- 
work. The public secondary schools could ofifer this 
section to advantage, and through it train pupils for a 
better knowledge of the home or for future livelihood. 
(3) The Trade Section. This is a business shop, which 
reproduces trade conditions as nearly as possible and 
is subdivided into the same progressive divisions. 



OUTLINES AND ACCOUNTS 7I 

Although the object is to work as trade does, the edu- 
cational aim is also prominent, and the course of train- 
ing has been planned with both ends in view. Order 
work plays an important part in this section, for it 
makes possible the quantity and variety of material 
necessary to supply the many repetitions of important 
phases of dressmaking, the new views of old principles, 
and the elaborate costume manufacturing which are 
needed in the training.) It would be impossible for a 
school to adequately deal with the many varieties of 
garments in this trade without some equivalent for the 
order work. The use of models or of practice material 
is not satisfactory on account of the great difference 
between theoretical and practical knowledge in handling 
valuable materials. A girl may learn to run fine tucks 
on cheesecloth, but this will not enable her to do satis- 
factory hand-tucking on chiffon. Neither is it a correct 
educational or economic principle to cut up quantities 
of good material, which the students will look upon as 
"rags," and then, after working on them, to throw them 
into a receptacle for waste or sell them simply to get 
rid of them. ! To secure the best results in any line of 
instruction there must be interest and enthusiasm. The 
aim, therefore, must be definite and the results vital. 
The work is planned to foster these higher qualities. The 
students produce articles for a definite use; they are 
given a required time in which the work should be com- 
pleted; trade itself sets the standard of judgment, and 
a definite relation exists between the work of all the 
classes, so that old principles may be recognized when 
presented ia new forms. ^ 



72 THE MAKING OF A TRADE SCHOOL 

Courses of Work 

I. Elementary Section. ( i ) Beginners' Class. First, 
a test is given each girl when she enters which enables 
her instructor to judge of her ability in sewing. It has 
been found necessary, in the majority of cases, to teach 
all or the greater part of the following principles: the 
use of sewing utensils, the making of the stitches, their 
application in articles, and the running of the sewing 
machine. Hence the second step has been a course of 
work covering the use of these needed principles, each 
girl beginning at the point where she needs training. 
Third, the final test. On the satisfactory completion of 
this very elementary training a test is given to show a 
girl's ability to work, to think, and to utilize ideas. If 
she is not yet fully prepared, further time is spent 
in emphasizing the points she still requires. 

The work in the Beginners' Class is done upon arti- 
cles which have a trade value and which are sold to 
customers or to the students for about the cost of the 
materials. The school furnishes the materials for aU 
elementary work, but the students must provide their 
own tools and keep them in good condition. These in- 
clude a thimble, needles, scissors, a tape measure, an 
emery, and a white apron. 

Class instruction followed by individual criticism 
is the method of teaching in the Elementary Section. 
Emphasis is placed upon the proper use of the utensils, 
the position of the body, and the handling of the work. 
Individual records are kept of the grade of work and 
of the time taken to finish a problem. The course takes 



OUTLINES AND ACCOUNTS 73 

from two to three months to complete, and the students 
are at work four and one-half hours per day. 

Outline of Work in Beginners' Class 

1. Stitches and special forms of sewing: Basting, 
running, overhanding, overcasting, hemming, blind 
stitching, sewing on buttons (two hole, four hole), 
buttonholes, featherstitching. 

2. Seams: Plain; selvage and raw edges; French; 
felled; straight and bias edges; overhanded. 

3. Machine stitching: Straight seams and rows; 
hems; facings — points; use of tucker. 

4. Principles: Measuring, seams, hems, tucks, cut- 
ting by a thread ; matching stripes ; turning and basting 
hems ; making casing for drawstrings; putting on band — 
by hand, by machine — one and two pieces ; setting strings 
into bands ; finishing ends of hems ; putting on pockets — 
straight and shaped; plain placket; cutting bias strips; 
piecing bias strips; facing curved and straight edges 
(armholes, neck, waist, points) ; joining waist and skirt 
with bias facing; making straight tucked ruffle; insert- 
ing ruffle under tuck on skirt ; ripping. 

5. Articles used in the work (this list is changed 
at will and is merely representative) : Handwork — Pin 
cushion, bag, towel, white apron with ruffle. Machine 
work— Belt, gingham apron oversleeves, child's dress 
with waist, uniform apron. 

6. Supplementary work: Shoe bags, silver cases, 
holders, bibs, silk bags, darning bags, needle books, 
traveling cases, baby caps and work of a similar 
character. 

7. Materials used: Cotton, linen, silk. 

(2) Intermediate Class. The Beginners' Class gives 
most of its time to hand sewing, the Intermediate Class 



74 THE MAKING OF A TRADE SCHOOL 

emphasizes machine sewing. The work is a repetition 
of the principles taught in the Beginners' Class, but is 
presented in a different manner, with new applications. 
Orders are taken from individuals or business houses 
for the garments which are made in this course. The 
price is that of the trade. These orders furnish a market 
for the entire output of the class. A certain amount of 
class instruction is given, but the girls are expected to 
do independent work under supervision. 

Outline of Work in Intermediate Class 

1. Review of former principles on new garments: 
(i) French seam — straight edges, baby slips and night- 
gowns. (2) Hems, (a) straight, (b) turned by hand, 
on princess aprons, bloomers, sleeves, etc., (c) turned by 
machine — hemmer on ruffles, for drawers and petticoats. 
(3) Overcasting — seams of skirts. (4) Buttonholes — 
all garments. (5) Plackets — plain hemmed, on skirts, 
baby slips. (6) Bias bands — joining and applying to 
straight and curved edges, on princess aprons, drawers, 
top of petticoat. (7) Ruffle — joining, measuring, and 
applying under tuck, on skirt and drawers. (8) Machine 
instruction — threading, setting needles, winding bobbin, 
scale of thread, needle, and stitch. 

2. New principles: (i) Flat fell — shaped and bias 
edges on princess aprons and drawers. (2) French seam 
— shaped edges in petticoat seams. (3) Loops — on 
petticoats and dressing sacques. (4) Hems — shaped 
edges in gored skirts, princess aprons and nightgowns, 
baby slips and children's dresses. (5) Overhanding — 
pieces on nightgowns, piecing ruffles and lace on under- 
wear. (6) Plackets — faced in drawers, petticoats, bloom- 
ers, and dress skirts. (7) Bias band — applying to top 
of ruffle in petticoats and drawers. (8) Bias binding — 



OUTLINES AND ACCOUNTS 75 

corset cover and nightgown. (9) Ruffle — finishing with 
bias bands on petticoat and drawers. (10) Cuffs — 
making and applying to nightgowns, baby sHps, rompers, 
and house dresses. (11) Sleeves — gathering on wrong 
side and putting into baby slips, nightgowns, dressing 
sacques, etc. (12) Pressing. (13) Sewing hooks and 
eyes on petticoats. (14) Machine instruction in clean- 
ing, oiling, and attachments. 

3. List of articles made for stock and order: Aprons 
— princess, maids', fancy. Women's clothes — dressing 
sacques, nightgowns, kimonos, lounging robes, house 
dresses, chemises, drawers, skirts (washable, mohair, 
silk), collars, and corset covers. Children's clothes — 
nightdresses, night drawers, drawers, skirts, rompers, 
dresses, and aprons. 

4. Materials used: Cotton, silk, woolen, and 
worsted. 

II. Vocational Section. The increasing demand for 
ready-made clothing has opened a new field for girls 
obliged to enter the business world as soon as the law 
will permit them to leave school. This requires hand 
finishing on fancy waists and plain and fancy gowns, 
which are made by the dozens on machines run by elec- 
tric power. It is not necessary to have a knowledge of 
actual dressmaking to be able to do this work. The 
ability to do good handwork rapidly is the prerequisite. 
In some establishments there are opportunities for girls 
of ability to rise from finisher to draper, which latter 
position commands a high wage. 

The producing of fine, handmade underwear, waists, 
and dresses is another opportunity for girls who can 
take but a short time in which to prepare to earn their 
living. Work of this character is of a much higher grade 



*j6 THE MAKING OF A TRADE SCHOOL 

than that of the wholesale finishing, and demands the 
ability to do extremely good hand and machine work. 
The worker must be able to handle the finest kind of 
materials and to do the most intricate work, such as hand 
tucking, setting in lace, and trimmings. 

Although the course in the Vocational Section trains 
for specific branches, it is very necessary that all dress- 
making students should have experience in these lines in 
order to be better prepared for the actual dressmaking. 
If, however, a girl has the ability to do the work of these 
classes, she is allowed to skip either one or both of them. 

Course of work in the Shop for Gymnasium and 
Swimming Suits: The students are drilled for one or 
two months in putting garments together, stitching, and 
finishing. As but two kinds of garments are made, 
speed is acquired and a certain amount of accuracy is 
gained through much repetition. Definite arrangements 
have been made through wholesale houses for the dis- 
position of the product. The materials are furnished by 
the school. The price is that of trade. 

(i) Articles: Swimming suits (patented), bathing 
suits, and gymnasium suits. (2) Materials used: Cotton, 
wool, worsted. 

Course of work in White Work Class : The previous 
training having been a general one for accuracy, speed, 
and the mastery over mind and hand, attention is now 
given for two and one-half or three months to fine 
detail work and the handling and keeping fresh and 
clean of the daintiest of cotton goods. The materials 
are furnished by the school and the work is sold to 
customers at trade prices. 



OUTLINES AND ACCOUNTS "JJ 

(i) Principles: Hand-tucking, rolling and whipping, 
mitering corners, overhanding trimming, inserting lace 
and embroidery by hand and machine, fine featherstitch- 
ing, and white hand embroidery. (2) Garments for 
stock and order; fine underwear, waists, and baby 
clothes. (3) Material used: cotton. 

IIL Trade Section — The Business Shop. Trade 
demands skilled workers, and preference is given to those 
who have had practical training. The trade section aims 
to add experience to skill by offering the students the 
actual work and conditions demanded in the outside 
market. The general scheme is the one in use in 
moderate-sized dressmaking establishments. 

The workroom has its tables devoted to separate 
kinds of work, the students obtain a definite amount of 
knowledge from each experience, and pass from one 
to the other as rapidly as their ability to grasp the prin- 
ciples will permit. Each division is in charge of an 
instructor with practical trade experience, who prepares 
and supervises the work and also does the skilled parts 
which the students, on account of their lack of experi- 
ence, are unable to do. 

The girls are not taught cutting, fitting, and draping, 
as trade would not permit a sixteen-year-old girl to 
attempt this work on account of her lack of judgment 
and experience ; but they have the opportunity to see and 
assist in the preparation of work. No girl in the trade 
shop will make a complete garment, but she will have 
worked upon all parts many times. 

Custom orders supply the shop with work. The 
customers are interviewed, measurements are taken, esti- 



78 THE MAKING OF A TRADE SCHOOL 

mates are given, and dates for fittings are planned. The 
information obtained is recorded upon blanks prepared 
for the purpose. The materials are purchased, the gar- 
ments cut, and the different parts (skirts, waists, sleeves) 
are delivered to the tables where such work is done. 
Blanks are provided for the recording of all materials 
used for customers' work, and from these the bills are 
made out in the main office. Stock is obtained from the 
storerooms on signed requisitions only. The stock clerk 
measures and delivers the materials and notes the amount 
withdrawn on each package. 

Course in Dressmaking Shop : 

1. Linings: Waist (practice materials): basting, 
stitching, pressing, binding, boning (whalebone, feather- 
bone) ; hooks and eyes; facing; overcasting. 

2. Shirtwaists and nurses' uniforms : Covering rings ; 
making shirtwaist cuff; making shirtwaist placket; put- 
ting on neckbands. 

3. Skirts: Petticoats or drop skirts for; basting, 
stitching, pressing; seams, bands, plackets; trimming, 
pinning, putting on band. 

4. Trimmed skirts: Slip stitching; milliner's and flat 
folds ; covering buttonholes ; binding, shirring, cording, 
tucking, piping, facing, braiding. 

5. Trimmed waists : Application of principles ; ex- 
perience in making and applying trimming and handling 
delicate or perishable materials. 

6. Trimmed sleeves: Application in general know- 
ledge and experience in applying trimmings. 

7. Garments made in the shop : Shirtwaists, fancy 
dressing sacques and wrappers; nurses' and maids' uni- 
forms ; dancing dresses ; elaborate waists ; street, after- 
noon, and evening gowns ; tailored suits. 



OUTLINES AND ACCOUNTS 79 

8. Materials used : All varieties of cotton, linen, silk, 
woolen, and worsted dress fabrics; chiffon, mousselain, 
and trimmings of all kinds. 

IV. Results of training. A change in the general 
appearance of the girls is soon apparent, for which 
ability to make their own clothes and the refining influ- 
ence of the doing of good work on good materials is 
probably responsible. The elements of good order, 
obedience, thoughtfulness, judgment, self-control, in- 
dustry, and thrift are fostered, and every effort is put 
forth to make intelligent workers. 

The fact that on entering trade the girls from the 
Trade School receive nearly double the salary given 
untrained girls indicates that they are fitted for the out- 
side workrooms. 

V. Departmental relations. The emphasis which the 
Academic and Art Departments have laid upon accuracy, 
careful work, appreciation of measurements, distances, 
color, and form has been of great value to the students 
in the Dressmaking Department. The Operating De- 
partment has also been of service in training some of the 
students to work on special machines, thus enabling 
them to make dress decoration. The use of the electric 
power machine in custom dressmaking establishments is 
on the increase. 

VI. Trade relation. The department is kept in close 
touch with trade conditions through personal visits, 
through the houses which purchase its output, and through 
those from whom the stock is bought. Many oppor- 
tunities to purchase materials at reduced rates have been 
secured through the kindly interest of the trade. 



8o THE MAKING OF A TRADE SCHOOL 

An advisory board, composed of business men and 
women, has been appointed to pass judgment upon the 
scheme of work, the standard and quality of work, and 
the cost and market value of the products. 

Millinery Department 
Aim 

The aim of the Millinery Department is to train 
assistants, improvers, frame makers, and preparers for 
wholesale and custom workrooms. 

Short Course 

When this department was first opened the scope of 
the work for the day classes was much more extended 
and included training for copyists, designers, and mil- 
liners. The curtailing of the course to more elementary 
preparation was brought about by a feeling of dissatis- 
faction with this trade for the young, untrained, or partly 
skilled workers. Close and continued contact with 
millinery shops showed that for young wage-earners a 
small, initial wage and a not very rapid rise are usual ^; 
that a short, irregular, seasonal engagement is almost 
inevitable; that a long experience is needed before even 
the trained girl can rise to the higher positions; that 
young workers become discouraged and are apt to drop 
the trade altogether, even for lower wages, if they can 
obtain steady work in another occupation. As it was 
the fourteen or fifteen-year-old girl who came for the 
instruction, it was better for her to be well trained as 
an assistant than to detain her at the school for a more 
advanced position which she would probably not be 



OUTLINES AND ACCOUNTS 8l 

allowed to take on account of her youth and inexperience. 
Students in this department need to be watched with 
especial care to determine whether they are well adapted 
for their occupation, and the mediocre worker would 
better enter some other field where the opportunities for 
her are more encouraging. As the advance is slow the 
girl also whose poverty is hurrying her into wage- 
earning would better not elect this work. 

The night classes which have been offered at the 
school gave training in the more advanced lines of 
millinery. The day classes are also prepared to do so 
whenever older workers feel they can give time for the 
instruction. 

Course of Instruction 

Length of course : Six months. 

1. Practice : Shirring, tucking, cording, rolled hem, 
plain fold, milliner's fold, and cutting and joining bias 
pieces. 

2. Making and covering buckles and buttons ; wiring 
ribbons and laces ; making hat linings and wiring hats. 

3. Bandeaux: Wire, capenet, and buckram. 

4. Wire frame construction from dimensions and 
models; making frames of buckram, capenet, and stiff 
willow. 

5. Covering frames with crinoline, capenet, mull, 
maline, and soft willow. 

6. Facings : Plain, shirred, and in folds. 

7. Bindings : Stretch, puff, and rolled. 

8. Plateaux : Plain and fancy. 

9. Making hats of straw, silk, chiffon, maline, and 
velvet. 



82 THE MAKING OF A TRADE SCHOOL 

10. Sewing trimmings on hats and sewing linings 
in hats. 

11. Renovating: Ribbon, velvet, lace, feathers, 
flowers. 

12. Machine work : Plain stitching, tucking, shirring, 
bias strips stitched on material. 

Orders are taken for a limited amount of trimmed 
hats in order to provide the students with experience in 
preparing, sewing on the trimming, and in finishing the 
hat. 

As millinery is a seasonal trade, students are advised 
to take, in addition, lamp and candle shade making in 
the Novelty Department, or straw sewing in the Operating 
Department. They are thus provided with good trades 
during the months when their own trade is dull. 

Novelty Department 
Aim 

(i) To teach the use of paste and glue in several 
good trades. (2) A short course in lampshade and 
candleshade making for girls who have a dull season in 
their regular trade during November, December, and 
January. 

Lines of 'Work 

Sample mounting, novelty work,, jewelry and silver- 
ware case making, lampshade and candleshade making. 

Trades and "Wages 

Sample mounting is pasting or gluing samples of all 
kinds of material on cards or in books to be used by 
salesmen in selling goods. New York is a center for this 



OUTLINES AND ACCOUNTS 83 

class of work. It gives year-round employment to many 
girls, and offers wages from $5 to $15 a week. The 
simpler lines of sample mounting can be learned by almost 
any girl. A bright student can learn this trade in six 
months. 

Novelty work is the covering and lining of cases and 
boxes with different materials. Girls can earn from $5 
to $18 a week, and can learn the trade in from eight 
months to a year. 

In jewelry and silverware case making the girls are 
taught both to cover and line up the cases; they earn 
from $5 to $15 a week. It takes from eight months to 
a year to learn this trade. 

Lampshade and candleshade making: A short course 
is offered to good sewers who wish to learn a line of 
work that will give them employment during November, 
December, and January, which is the busy season in this 
occupation. Girls can earn from $1 to $2 a day. It is a 
very good course for millinery workers, as the work is 
similar and therefore easily learned, and the slack time 
in millinery is the busy time in this trade. 

Course of Work 

All pupils entering the Novelty Department take a 
short course in sample mounting to learn the use of 
paste and glue. Some are advanced soon to the novelty 
work, while others continue in sample mounting, taking 
up a greater variety of work along that line. Those 
entering for lamp and candle shade making do not take 
the sample mounting, but come from the millinery or 
sewing classes, where they have had some training with 
the needle. 



84 THE MAKING OF A TRADE SCHOOL 

Interrelation with Academic and Art Work 

In the academic classes the girls are drilled in 
measurements and have problems estimating the cost 
of materials and labor. Their discussions pertain to 
actual processes and materials used in the classes of the 
Novelty Department. 

In the art classes the girls are trained to draw 
straight lines and square corners, to miter corners, to 
fold on a line, to make good letters and figures, and to 
appreciate good proportions and balance. This work 
enables the student to arrange her samples in straight 
lines on the card, with proper margins, and to print 
neatly on the card the name of the materials and stock 
numbers. The discussion of materials helps her to cut 
and place her materials on the cases so that the design 
will appear to the best advantage. The color work aids 
her in choosing the best hues of ribbons or linings to 
use with the figured coverings. 

Orders 

Where trade orders can be used without keeping 
the girls too long on the one problem, they prove a great 
incentive and also help them to acquire speed. Private 
orders give more variety in the work, and thus enable 
the girls to adjust themselves more easily to each season's 
new styles. The private orders, however, being smaller 
in number, do not help the students to acquire the speed 
that the repetition does in the large trade orders. Each 
kind of order work is used, as it can be of advantage 
to the development of the student. 



outlines and accounts 85 

Art Department 

The courses of work in the Art Department are 
shaped according to the needs of each trade department. 
Various phases of work in dressmaking, electric power 
operating, novelty, and milHnery are made ''centers of 
interest." Each girl thus finds her art aiding her to be 
more valuable in her trade. Her enthusiasm is awakened 
and she is stimulated to self-expression directly along 
the line of her chosen work. The entering students 
lack in the technical skill which can be used in their 
trades. The first step, therefore, is to give the ele- 
mentary exercises needed in their departments. This is 
followed by more difficult and more artistic work as the 
student shows ability. 

Aims 

To help the work of the trade departments, to im- 
prove the trade selected by each student, to give ideals. 

Conditions 

Time of average student in art, seven months, three 
hours per week. Previous art training little or none. 

Difficulties 

The students do not see or estimate correctly; they 
are not exact, and they lack ideals. 

Organization of Art Work 

I. General course for all students, connecting Art 
Department with Trade Courses. Approximate time, 
three months, three times a week. 



86 THE MAKING OF A TRADE SCHOOL 

1. Principles of Proportion: Measurements by ruler 
and free-hand. Related lines and sizes, as in hems and 
margins. 

2. General Use of Principles: (i) Horizontal, ver- 
tical, oblique lines for machine practice. (2) Related 
margins and spots as used in the writing of letters, the 
orderly placing of subject on a page. 

3. Specific Department Work: Departments express 
their needs to Art Department, (i) Machine operat- 
ing: (a) Lines — horizontal, vertical, oblique, for ma- 
chine practice. (b) Quilting, banding, practice for 
curves and square corners. 

(2) Sewing: (a) Lines — horizontal, vertical, oblique, 
for machine and hand practice and tailor basting, (b) 
Hems, tucks as prescribed by department and propor- 
tioned to garment, (c) Constructive drawing — giving 
different angles and figures with a view toward an in- 
telligent use of patterns for waists and skirts, (d) Piec- 
ing bias and mitering corners. 

(3) Novelty: (a) Lines — horizontal, vertical, oblique, 
for sample mounting, (b) Spacings for sample mount- 
ing, (c) Letterings and figures for sample mounting. 
(d) Margins for pasting different shaped labels and 
samples, (e) Paper folding, mitering corners. 

(4) Millinery: (a) Lines — horizontal, vertical, 
oblique, for hand sewing practice, (b) Problems for 
proportions for the wire frames, (c) Bias facings and 
mitered and square corners, (d) Color. 

Students unable to benefit further by the Art Work 
are dropped from course and devote this time to their 
trade. 

II. Supplementary course for students showing 
ability who have finished the prescribed departmental 
course. Approximate time, seven to nine months. 



OUTLINES AND ACCOUNTS 8/ 

1. Machine Operating: (i) First step in designs, 
arrangement of straight lines in borders, and orderly 
arrangement of spots in borders. (2) Squared-off de- 
signs, stenciling same, for coordination. (3) Sample 
curved line designs, continuous (limitation of machine 
and for speed). (4) Patterns for practice work for the 
special machine. (5) Special workers to practice the 
exercises for the Bonnaz machine. (6) Color — three 
charts. (7) Exercises for perforating. 

2. Sewing: (i) Simple designs for shirtwaists and 
for braiding. (2) Designs for revers, cuffs, vests, and 
yokes. (3) Proportions of figure. (4) Copying from 
magazines for trade technicalities. (5) Discussions on 
dress for trade workers. (6) Color harmony in dresses 
and application. 

3. Millinery: (i) Sketching different views of the 
hats. (2) Sketching models. (3) Color harmonies and 
application. (4) Discussions on how art principles can 
be applied to hats of the present day. 

4. Novelty : ( i ) Simple, squared-off designs stenciled 
for coordination for hand and head, not gained in the 
trade work. (2) Simple illumination of words and 
phrases. (3) The materials and decoration to be used 
for pads, desk sets, and boxes discussed and carried out. 

In this supplementary course emphasis is put on the 
thought, invention, and appreciation of the student. 

III. Special course for students who show unusual 
ability in art and can utilize it in trade. 

1. Costume sketching for making records in dress- 
making workrooms. 

2. Stamping and perforating: {a) Machine practice 
— pedaling, guiding needle, threading machine, and learn- 
ing to adjust the different parts, {h) Stamping on differ- 
ent materials with the different mediums ; composition of 
the different mediums, liquid and dry. {c) Copying 



88 THE MAKING OF A TRADE SCHOOL 

patterns for perforating; nature study for motifs; con- 
ventionalizing those to apply them to materials. 

(All designs are such as can be used in trade and are 
made according to trade methods.) 

Academic Department 
Aim 

I. Elementary: To supplement previous schooling. 
Girls who have left the public school from low grades 
need special tutoring in the common branches. Special 
instruction is also needed for newly arrived foreigners. 

II. Trade: To quicken and enrich the mind, that 
the girl may become a more efficient, intelligent, and 
enthusiastic trade worker. 

The work falls under the following subjects: Civics, 
Industries, Arithmetic, English. 

Civics 

This course is given as a means of enabling the pupil 
to recognize her place in the family, the school, the com- 
munity, and in the world's work. For lack of a better 
term it is called Civics. It is dealt with under two heads : 
(i) Community Life in General, (2) Community Life 
in New York City. 

I. Under the fifst head the discussion of life in a 
given community is followed by the simple facts that 
lie at the foundation of civic life. These are approached 
through the interests or desires which the pupil feels in 
common with all other people. Building still further 
on the pupil's own experience, she is led to apply the 



OUTLINES AND ACCOUNTS 89 

ideas received to her own community, which ever widen- 
ing its scope is carried from the neighborhood or the 
school to the city, the state, and on to the nation. 

Civics also gives to the pupils a knowledge of the 
existing laws under which they will work, by whom 
these laws are made, and the possible means for improv- 
ing them. In the discussion of such subjects as Tene- 
ment House Laws, Child Labor Laws, and Trade-Unions, 
there is opportunity for the introduction of home and 
business economics which have been found to be valu- 
able. Economics is further taught by the detailed dis- 
cussion of the apportionment of an income of $6 a week 
for fifty working weeks, considering car fare, lunches, 
savings, a portion toward family support, and an allow- 
ance for clothes. The literature for this course is 
obtained from the United States Department of Com- 
merce and Labor, the State Department of Factory 
Legislation, the Consumers' League, the National and 
State Labor Committees, and current magazines, Mr. 
Arthur M. Dunn's, "The Community and the Citizen," 
especially such chapters as those on the "Making of 
Americans," "How the Government Aids the Citizen 
in His Business Life," "Waste and Saving," "What the 
Community Does for Those Who Cannot or Will Not 
Contribute to Its Progress," has given valuable assist- 
ance in leading to discussions which have direct bearing 
upon daily life and work. 

2. The following outline shows the treatment of the 
second division of Civics: 

New York City: (i) City Government, (a) Officials, 
Mayor, Commissioner, Borough President, Aldermen; 



90 THE MAKING OF A TRADE SCHOOL 

(b) City Departments. (2) Citizenship, (a) Who are 
citizens, (b) How to become a citizen, (c) Duties and 
privileges of citizens, (d) Aliens. (3) Child Labor 
Laws, (a) School attendance, (b) Working papers, how 
obtained, (c) Hours for work. (4) Factory Laws for 
girls over sixteen years old. (5) Sweatshop labor. 
(6) Tenement House Laws. (7) Trade-Unions. (8) 
Commerce and Industries of New York. (9) Philan- 
thropies. 

Industries 

Aim: To furnish the worker with a background for 
Tier trade and to help her to see her place in the working 
world of today, i. A generalized view is taken of the 
main steps in the early progress of the race. 2. Textile 
materials are discussed as to their values, their uses, their 
cost, the processes of their manufacture, the comparison 
of foreign and domestic goods, with reasons for the dif- 
ferences, and the connected problems of arithmetic which 
the students will meet. These subjects help the girl to 
"get next" to what she is working with every day and 
to arouse interest in her personal connection with the 
subject. The English girl whose father was once em- 
ployed in a lace house in London brings mounted 
specimens of that sort of handwork to the class; the 
Hungarian brings hand-spun articles from her mother's 
bridal outfit; the Italian presents a skein of raw silk 
taken from the family's treasure box, and the girl from 
Roumania brings an embroidered bed cover. The student 
whose mother does not believe cotton ever grew on 
bushes asks that she may verify her own statement by 
taking home a real cotton ball. A Labor Museum 
is being collected to give reality to the instruction, and 



OUTLINES AND ACCOUNTS 9I 

exhibits from it, which show the steps in the manufac- 
turing of the fabrics and of other famiHar articles, are 
put up in the classroom when needed. A bulletin board 
provides for the numerous clippings brought by the 
students or teachers. 

Arithmetic 

Aim: The fundamental aim of arithmetic is to give 
the pupils working methods for the problems that occur 
in trade practice. To make the correlation clear to the 
girls, workroom methods of presentation and phrase- 
ology and the customary materials are used. Sewing 
and operating students make hems, tucks, and rufflles 
to actual measurements; novelty girls cut and arrange 
cards for samples in accordance with their workroom 
demands; and millinery students work out the measure- 
ments for hat frames as closely as varying styles permit. 

With the fundamentals of trade problems established, 
arithmetic is further developed along special lines of 
trade to meet the demands of the business world. The 
trained worker should not only be skilled in the manipu- 
lation of tools and materials, but she should be able to 
compute her own problems, such as estimates for gar- 
ments, how to cut materials economically, the cost of 
one garment or article as related to the cost of many 
of the same kind, the prices, and similar trade questions. 
The ability to deal with these subjects adds materially 
to the value of a skilled worker. 

The central scheme of the course is to lead the pupil 
to prompt and accurate mental calculation. This is 
stimulated by frequent oral drills in trade problems and 



92 THE MAKING OF A TRADE SCHOOL 

business problems involving short methods of compu- 
tation. The extent and progress of this work are regu- 
lated by the ability of the class. 

The following outlines show the adaptation of arith- 
metic to the different trades : 

Operating: (i) Cutting of gauges, (a) For hems, 
{h) For tucks. (2) Tucking problems, (a) With gauges, 
(&) As formal arithmetic problems. (3) Ruffling prob- 
lems. (4) Time problems. Department time schedules 
as basis for the work. (5) Factory problems. (6) In- 
come, expenditure, savings. (7) Bills and receipts. 
(8) Computation of quantity of material required for 
garments, (a) By measuring garments, (&) By use of 
patterns on cloth, (c) Economy of material. (9) Prob- 
lems based on above work. (10) Civic problems. 

Sewing: (i) Cutting of gauges, {a) For hems, 
(&) For tucks. (2) Tucking problems. (3) Ruffling 
problems. (4) Computation of quantity of material 
required for garments, (a) By measuring garments, 
(&) By use of patterns on cloth, (c) Economy of mate- 
rial. (5) Problems based on above work. (6) Store 
problems. (7) Bills and receipts. (8) Income, expendi- 
tures, savings. (9) Textile problems. (10) Civic 
problems. 

Novelty: (i) Sample mounting, (a) Cards are cut a 
given size and are divided with the ruler into spaces 
for samples, with proper margins, etc., according to trade 
demands, (&) Problems involving the various sizes and 
shapes of cards and samples, using cards and rulers for 
the work. (2) Sample cutting. (3) Cutting materials 
for boxes, (a) Pulp board, (&) Covering plain, flowered, 
{c) Economy of materials. (4) Problems based on above 
work. (5) Trade problems, (a) In sample mounting, 
accuracy, speed, (&) Cost of materials. (6) Bills and 
receipts. (7) Income, expenditure, savings. (8) Civic 
problems. 



OUTLINES AND ACCOUNTS 93 

Millinery: (i) Measurement of frames. (2) Trade 
problems, (a) Quantity of material, (b) Price of mate- 
rials, (c) Economy of material. (3) Orders, (a) By 
letter, (b) By order blanks. (4) Bills and receipts. 
(5) Income, expenditure, savings. (6) Problems on 
manufacture of silk. (7) Civic problems. 

English 

Aim: i. To facilitate oral and written expression. 
2. To give practice in business forms: Spelling: (i) 
Technical terms of each trade department; (2) Textiles 
and other trade materials ; ( 3 ) Ordinary business terms. 
Descriptions: (i) Written work on materials used and 
articles made in each department; (2) Outlining and 
defining of department work. Business Forms: (i) 
Letters of application; (2) Letters ordering goods; 
(3) Telegrams, postal cards, etc.; (4) Writing of, 
advertisements. 

In addition to practice in spelling and in the writing , 
of business forms, the work in English aims to be in ! 
close correlation with the other subjects taught. As a i 
rule, the latter part of each recitation period is spent 
by the pupils in writing upon the subject in hand. The 
purpose is to obtain from them freedom of expression 
after arousing interest in a subject, rather than to get 
long compositions necessitating home study and probably 
generating a dislike for written work. Attention is 
called to paragraphing and emphasis is laid upon both 
the form and the manner of writing, but form is made 
subservient to thought. The interrelation of Art Depart- 
ment helps the student to appreciate the need of good 
form in the appearance of a written page. 



94 the making of a trade school 

Physical Education Department 

The young wage-earner who goes into trade untrained 
at fourteen years of age is greatly handicapped by her 
physical condition. Either through ignorance or neglect 
early symptoms of disease are disregarded, and it is not 
until she finds herself out of employment as a result of 
physical weakness that she realizes that good health is 
the capital of the working girl. 

Many of the girls who enter the school are found 
to be suffering from poor vision ; enlarged glands caused 
by decayed teeth; poor nasal breathing as a result of 
adenoid growths or enlarged tonsils ; anaemia ; skin erup- 
tions; slight asymmetries and poor posture. These 
defects produce exaggerated nerve signs and poor 
nutrition. 

Aim 

The work of the Physical Department is to correct 
as many of these irregularities as possible and also to 
train the student to a knowledge of her body and how- 
to care for it, that she may be able to stand the long 
hours of confining work and be able to show efficient 
results in her trade. 

The following examination is required of each enter- 
ing student: 

Physical Examination: Beginning with the family 
history, a complete record of all important events relat- 
ing to a student's physical life is taken. She is carefully 
examined for asymmetry; curvature, incipient or well 
defined; traces of tuberculosis; weakness of heart and 
lungs; enlarged glands; skin diseases, or signs of nerv- 



OUTLINES AND ACCOUNTS 95 

ous disorders. She is closely questioned as to all bodily 
functions and a careful record is kept of irregularities. 
Eyes, ears, teeth, nose, and throat are likewise examined. 
Impressions of the feet are made in order to detect 
weakness of the arch or flat foot. Measurements of 
height, weight, and the principal expansions are taken 
for comparison with later records and for the purpose 
of comparing with normal standard. 

Prescribed Treatment 

After the examination the girl is instructed as to 
treatment, if any is needed. If perfectly normal she 
will report for gymnastics three times a week. If any 
asymmetry, curvature of the spine, heart disease, or 
nervous disorders are discovered, she must report for' 
special corrective exercises at the school. In some cases 
individual instruction is given for supplementing the 
work at home. Cases demanding special apparatus and 
individual attention have been treated in the Physical 
Education Department of Teachers College, through the 
kindness of the director, Dr. Thomas Denison Wood. 
The girls so affected have thus the advantage of the 
latest methods known to science. If any of the numer- 
ous skin diseases are present which demand frequent 
and regular attention, the student is assigned to a group 
who go twice a week to a dispensary to receive electrical 
or X-ray treatment. In cases of enlarged tonsils or 
adenoids, the necessity for immediate operation is ex- 
plained and every effort made to gain the consent of 
the parents. When permission is obtained the girl goes 
to a neighboring hospital on Sunday evening, is oper- 



96 THE MAKING OF A TRADE SCHOOL 

ated upon on Monday, and returns home Tuesday. Each 
student must have her eyes thoroughly examined by a 
doctor selected at the Ophthalmic Dispensary. If glasses 
are needed they are procured at the expense of the parent 
or donated by an optician who is interested in the school. 
Dispensary treatment is also necessary in cases of catarrh 
of nose and throat. Teeth are carefully examined and 
the girls directed to their own dentists, or to the Dental 
Dispensary adjoining the school, where we are fortunate 
enough to have a limited amount of work done free of 
charge. Cases of asymmetry demanding braces, plaster 
jackets, and operations have been treated at the Post- 
Graduate Hospital. Tuberculosis cases in advanced 
stages have been placed on the special boats in New 
York Harbor or are sent to Tubercular Camps in the 
country. 

In sending girls to the hospitals and dispensaries the 
aim is to place them in touch with institutions to which 
they will have independent access after they leave the 
Manhattan Trade School. 

Statistics 

The statistics below show the condition of 278 girls 
when they registered at the school. The charts are 
divided according to the departments entered. From 
them can be seen the need of special care for the health 
of the working girl. 

A second examination of the same girls six months 
later shows gain in weight, height, and general health; 
125 had their teeth put in order; six were treated for 
defective hearing; twenty had attended the Skin Clinic; 



OUTLINES AND ACCOUNTS 



97 







.S 
£ 

1 


< 


1 

3 


1 


c 

u 

a, 



3 
f2 


Nutrition 


Good 

Fair 

Poor 


lOI 

39 
7 


7 


15 

2 

'4 


26 

6 
10 


35 

18 

8 


184 

65 

29 


Mentality 


Good 

Fair 

Poor 


122 
21 

4 


7 


19 

2 


'I 

3 


40 
17 

4 


221 
46 
II 


Nerve signs 


Present 
Absent 


J 


3 
4 


6 
15 


13 

29 


16 

45 


77 
201 


Asymmetry 
slight curva- 
tures, high 
hips or 
shoulders, etc. 


Present 
Absent 


53 
94 


4 
3 


12 
9 


23 
19 


29 
32 


121 
157 


Posture 


Good 
Fair 


93 
54 


4 
3 


8 
13 


29 
13 


31 
30 


165 
"3 


Skin 


Good condition 
Acne, comedones, 


95 


5 


13 


32 


44 


189 




etc. 


52 


2 


8 


ID 


17 


89 


Glands 


Good condition 
Enlarged 


66 
8i 


3 

4 


ID 
II 


19 
23 


20 
41 


118 
160 


Vision 


Need glasses 
Good condition 


44 
103 


3 

4 


8 
13 


12 

30 


19 

42 


86 
192 


Hearing 


Defective 
Good 


6 
141 


6 


21 


4 
38 


I 

60 


12 

266 


Speech 


Good 
Defective 


170 
7 


7 


20 

I 


37 

5 


56 
5 


260 
8 


Nasal breathing 


Good 

Fair 

Poor 


57 


I 

4 
2 


4 

II 

6 


10 
13 
19 


13 
28 
20 


60 
114 
104 


Tonsils 


Good 

SUghtly enlarged 

Much enlarged 


44 
75 


I 
2 
4 


6 
II 

4 


7 

25 
10 


21 

24 
16 


79 

137 

62 



98 



THE MAKING OP A TRADE SCHOOL 







j 


< 


a 

3 


1? 

1 


2 

1 


i 


Teeth 


Good 
Poor 
Need attention 


103 

44 
108 


5 
2 

4 


16 

5 
12 


30 
12 

31 


40 
21 
40 


194 
84 
19s 


Hearts 


Good 

Weak, irritable, or 
with anaemic 


122 


4 


21 


23 


44 


214 




murmurs 
Organic trouble 


24 

I 


2 

I 




17 

2 


13 

4 


1 


Lungs 


Good 

Tuberculosis 
Suspected 
tuberculosis 


138 
3 

6 


5 
2 


20 

I 


36 

2 

4 


58 
3 


257 
s 

16 


Feet 


Good 

Weak arches 
Broken arches or 
flatfoot 


125 

ID 
12 


7 


16 
I 

4 


38 
4 


53 
4 

4 


239 
15 

24 


Enlarged 

thyroid glands 




12 


I 


2 


I 


7 


23 


Exophthalmic 
goiter 




2 








2 


4 


Chorea 




2 






2 


I 


5 


Needing 
corrective 
















exercises 




5 




3 


4 


7 


19 



all had their eyes examined; eighty-six were fitted with 
glasses. In twenty-five cases where the adenoids and 
tonsils were removed the result was increase in weight, 
better breathing and heart action, alertness of mind, and 
a noticeable improvement in trade work. Where the 
obstructions of nose and throat still remain there is loss 



OUTLINES AND ACCOUNTS 99 

in weight and diminished chest expansion and a gener- 
ally weakened condition. The extraction of decayed 
teeth and the providing of well-fitting glasses have' 
diminished nervous irritability and the frequency of 
headaches. Three cases of tuberculosis were sent to 
camps. Seven cases of organic heart trouble were treated 
by specialists ; nineteen girls were given corrective exer- 
cises at Teachers College; two were fitted with shoes 
and braces; two were put into plaster jackets, one 
for lateral rotary curvature and one for neuritis; and 
one advanced case of chorea has been placed in the 
hospital. Of the girls whose records are given in the 
list it can be said that, with the exception of the cripples 
and a few others needing simple operations, a year's 
care shows that very few of them are in any way handi- 
capped by the effects of disease. 

Physical Education Course 

1. Gymnastics : 

.1. Elementary: 3 thirty-minute periods a week. 
(l) Swedish floor work for general posture; (2) Work 
in control of breathing; (3) Marching tactics for form 
and accuracy; (4) Light apparatus work: (a) Wands, 
(b) Dumb-bells, (c) Indian clubs; (5) Heavy apparatus 
for coordination; (6) Simple dances and rhythm work 
for grace and poise; (7) Simple plays and games. 

2. Advanced: 2 forty-five-minute periods a week. 

( 1 ) Gymnastic dances containing more than three figures ; 

(2) Swedish and Danish weaving dances in correlation 
with study of textiles (Academic Department) ; (3) Folk 
dances of Sweden and Russia for form; (4) Modern 
athletic dances for grace and poise; (5) Athletic Com- 
petition: (a) Running and jumping, (b) Relay and 
obstacle races, (c) Hockey and basket ball. 



lOO THE MAKING OF A TRADE SCHOOL 

3. Special corrective work for spinal trouble or poor 
position: (i) General floor work for mobility; (2) Free- 
hand work: (a) Single assistive and resistive exercises, 
(b) Hanging exercises with and without assistance, (c) 
Work with iron dumb-bells. 

II. Hygiene: Talks on hygiene are a regular part 
of the work, and aim to give each girl a knowledge of 
her body and of its functions that will enable her to 
care for her health in an intelligent manner and to estab- 
lish in her mind ideals of correct living which can be 
made practical in her surroundings. 

1. Personal Hygiene: (i) Brief survey of the body 
as a whole; (2) The use of the mouth, nose, larynx, 
trachea, and lungs in breathing; (3) Care of nose and 
throat: (a) The nose as a source of infection, (b) Dan- 
gers of enlarged tonsils and adenoids, (c) Treatment 
of colds; (4) Structure and care of the teeth. (5) The 
Digestive System: (a) Organs directly concerned, and 
(b) Their care, (c) Disorders of the Digestive System; 

(6) The Nervous System, Brain, and Spinal Cord; 

(7) The Skin, (a) Structure and Use, (b) Hygiene of 
Skin; (8) Heart and Blood Vessels; (9) The Hair; 
(10) The Ears; (11) The Eyes; (12) The Feet; (13) 
The Hygiene of Clothes. 

2. Domestic Hygiene: Construction and furnish- 
ing of Home: (a) Internal arrangement, walls, and 
coverings, (b) Ventilation, (c) Heating, (d) Lighting, 
(e) Water Supply, (/) Plumbing and Drainage, (g) 
Toilet rooms, (h) Disposal of Garbage and Ashes, 
(i) House Cleaning, sweeping, dusting, cleaning, and 
use of disinfectants. 

3. Foods: (i) Nutritive value of foods; (2) Purity 
of food materials; (3) Cooking — Cooking utensils; 
(4) Planning of meals. 



OUTLINES AND ACCOUNTS lOI 

4. Diseases: (i) Causes and Transmission; (2) 
Contagious diseases, care, prevention; (3) Hygiene of 
sick room; (4) Insects and vermin; (5) Infectious 
diseases. 



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